Iron deficiency is very common even among healthy pregnant women — UCC study
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It is “extremely common” for pregnant women in Ireland to be iron deficient during the last months of pregnancy, new Irish research has found.
The study shows four out five pregnant women lack this vital mineral — putting their health and the health of their baby at risk.
Researchers at the Irish Centre for Maternal and Child Health (INFANT) and School of Food and Nutritional Sciences in University College Cork said over 80% of women are iron deficient by their third trimester.
The authors raised concerns about this as iron deficiency can have long-term consequences on the child’s brain development.
They analysed data from 641 women pregnant with their first baby and who had a successful delivery in one of the largest studies of its kind in the world.
“Iron deficiency defined by a variety of markers was very common during pregnancy, despite the mothers being generally healthy,” they found.
While the women were from a high-resource area meaning they did not face financial struggles, the study found they had “higher rates of deficiency in the third trimester than even some low-resource settings.”
However none were anaemic during the first three months of pregnancy.
Almost three quarters took a supplement containing iron at the Irish/European recommended daily allowance of 15-17mg.
Taking these supplements, mainly multivitamins before or in the early stages of pregnancy was linked with a reduced risk of iron deficiency. The women’s diet was not examined.
Lead researcher Elaine McCarthy said iron deficiency is the most common micronutrient deficiency in the world.
“But it has often been thought of as mainly a problem in low-resource settings,” Ms McCarthy said.
"Our research clearly illustrates that iron deficiency is extremely common amongst pregnant women, even in a generally healthy population, such as this cohort in Ireland, with greater than 80% of women iron deficient in their third trimester."
Ms McCarthy, from UCC’s INFANT Research Centre and School of Food and Nutritional Sciences, said routine screening for iron deficiency during pregnancy is not common in Ireland or other countries.
"In addition to this, we need to support and educate pregnant women around the importance of iron in their diets”
Iron can be found in foods such as red meats like beef and lamb, green leafy vegetables, beans, nuts and dried fruit.
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She added that UCC, with Cork University Maternity Hospital, and the Ireland South Women and Infants Directorate, are developing a patient resource on iron during pregnancy.
The study was conducted in collaboration with the University of Minnesota and the Masonic Institute of the Developing Brain.
Co-author Michael Georgieff, University of Minnesota, echoes the call for urgent action.
He called for a global policy on a “systematic method of screening all women for iron status in early pregnancy” to identify and help women deficient in iron.
• The study, Longitudinal evaluation of iron status during pregnancy: a prospective cohort study in a high-resource setting, can be read in the .