Extra Iron Doesn't Help Many Pregnant Women, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Mar. 13, 2011) Although universal prenatal supplementation with iron is recommended, an extra intake of iron does not noticeably benefit pregnant women, except when they are anemic. This was observed by researchers of the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp and colleagues who followed more than a thousand pregnant women in Burkina Faso.

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Our body needs iron to produce hemoglobin, the substance in our red blood cells responsible for the transport of oxygen through our body. In Western countries anemia -- a shortage of oxygen transporters -- is rare, but in Africa up to half of all women are anemic. Of the 1268 pregnant women in this study, 43% was anemic. Half of those women received daily pills with 60 milligrams of iron (plus folic acid); the other half received 30 mg of iron (plus folic acid, zinc, vitamins A and C and other micronutrients). Chance decided who got what. The women took the pills until 3 months after delivery. At the end of the study, all women ended up with about the same levels of iron in their blood, regardless of how much iron they had taken. They al had around 11 grams of hemoglobin per deciliter of blood, say slightly below normal. During pregnancy, when also the growing child needs oxygen, women need more iron than normally, certainly towards the end of their pregnancy. But the administration of extra iron to the 'normal' women could not prevent their hemoglobin levels from (slightly) dropping. "The benefit of iron supplements in nonanemic women is unclear," the authors conclude in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In Africa, where many people are malnourished, and where parasites also take their part, many women suffer from iron-poor blood. That of course has to be supplemented. In anemic women the pills made the iron levels go up, to the same level as in the other pregnant women: a bit below normal. Recommend this story on Facebook, Twitter,

Low Vitamin D in Kids May Play a Role in Anemia

ScienceDaily (May 11, 2011) Pediatricians from Johns Hopkins Children's Center and elsewhere have discovered a link between low levels of vitamin D and anemia in children.

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The findings, presented May 1 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Denver, Colo., show that vitamin D deficiency may play an important role in anemia.

Anemia, which occurs when the body has too few oxygen-carrying red blood cells, is diagnosed and tracked by measuring hemoglobin levels. Symptoms of mild anemia include fatigue, lightheadedness and low energy. Severe and prolonged anemia can damage vital organs by depriving them of oxygen.

To examine the relationship between hemoglobin and vitamin D, the researchers looked at data from the blood samples of more than 9,400 children, 2 to 18 years of age. The lower the vitamin D levels, the lower the hemoglobin and the higher the risk for anemia, the researchers found. Children with levels below 20 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) of blood had a 50 percent higher risk for anemia than children with levels 20 ng/ml and above. For each 1 ng/ml increase in vitamin D, anemia risk dropped by 3 percent.

Only 1 percent of white children had anemia, compared with 9 percent of black children. Black children also had, on average, much lower vitamin D levels (18) than white children (27). Researchers have long known that anemia is more common in black children, but the reasons for this remain unclear, although some suspect that biologic and genetic factors may be at play.

The new findings, however, suggest that low vitamin D levels in black children may be an important contributor to anemia.

"The striking difference between black and white children in vitamin D levels and hemoglobin gives us an interesting clue that definitely calls for a further study," said lead investigator Meredith Atkinson, M.D., M.H.S., a pediatric nephrologist at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

While the findings show a clear link between low vitamin D levels and anemia, they do not prove that vitamin D deficiency causes anemia, the investigators caution.

Other institutions involved in the research were Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of New York.