Effect of dietary counseling and iron supplementation on growth and nutritional iron status in a sample of exclusively breastfed Jordanian infants from four to six months of age
1996
Qazaq, H.S.
The effect of different strategies like exclusive breastfeeding, dietary counseling and medicinal iron supplementation on the growth and iron status of 6X three-month-old infants who had been exclusively breastfed up to four-to six-months of age was assessed. Iron status of infants was determined by performing complete blood count and plasma ferritin at 3, G,9 and 12 months of infant's age, and hence, the prevalence of nutritional anemia (NA), depletion of iron stores (DIS), iron deficiency (ID) without anemia, and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) was determined for both sexes: males and females. Infant growth was assessed by measuring nude weight, recumbent length and head circumference and their derived indices: weight for age (W/A), heigth for age (H/A) and weight for heigth (W/H). Exclusive breastfeeding was followed up to 4 to 6 months of age beyond which dietary counseling and iron supplementation strategies were applied. At three months of age, none of the infants developed either ID without anemia or IDA, while 1.5% had DIS and about 3% had NA. At six months of age, 2% of the infants had ID without anemia, 4.4% had IDA, 13.4% had DIS and about 23% developed NA. None of the infants suffered from underweight, stunting or wasting either at three or six months of age. The results indicate that the strategy of iron supplementation that was started at six months of age with a prophylactic dose of 1 mg/kg/day was the best in terms of the prevalence of NA (5.9%) and IDA (0.0%), followed by the strategy of dietary counseling with NA 26% and IDA 13%, while in the control group the prevalence of NA and IDA was the highest: 33.3% and 19%, respectively. None of the infants, anemic or non-anemic, suffered from wasting, stunting or underweight. No significant association was detected between the prevalence of NA and the studied socioeconomic factors. The duration of EBF was significantly associated with the prevalence of NA with an inverse relationship, the longer the duration of EBF, up to 5-6 months of age, the lower the prevalence of NA (p / 0.013). No significant differences were detected between males and females regarding the prevalence of NA during the period of 9-12 months of age, while at 6 months of age NA was significantly more prevalent in males than females
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