Iron and folate status before pregnancy and anemia during pregnancy.

BACKGROUND

A lack of information about the role that iron and folate stores (erythrocyte folate) play on the anemia incidence in pregnant women.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the predictive value of ferritin and erythrocyte folate before pregnancy in relationship to the incidence of anemia throughout pregnancy.

METHODS

Thirty-five non-anemic non-pregnant women were evaluated 1 or 2 months before the pregnancy. After becoming pregnant they were evaluated every 4 weeks starting in the 8th week of pregnancy until 1 month post-partum. Every evaluation included determination of hemoglobin, ferritin and erythrocyte folate.

RESULTS

When the women started gestation with an insufficient iron store (<20 microg/l), the trend was to present anemia at significantly earlier gestational ages, in such a way that at week 20 of gestation almost 60% of the women with an inadequate store had anemia and only 25% of the women with an adequate store had this condition. On the other hand, the pregestational erythrocyte folate did not predict anemia incidence.

CONCLUSIONS

Pregestational ferritin concentration predicts value of incidence of anemia throughout pregnancy.