ارزيابي تغذيه اي كودكان با فقرآهن

Nutritional Assessment of Iron-Deficient Children

Background and Objectives: Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency in children. According to "World Health Organization" reports, nearly 5 billion people suffer from iron deficiency worldwide. We designed this study to compare the nutritional and medicinal iron intake of iron-deficient children with those of non-anemic controls. Materials and Methods: In a comparative cross-sectional study on children admitted to "Tabriz Childrenʹs Hospital" through one year (from March 2005 through February 2006); nutritional and medicinal-iron intake of 60 consecutively-selected patients with iron-deficiency anemia were compared with those of 60 non-anemic children at the same age group (from 9 to 36 months old) with similar sex distribution. Results: The average hemoglobin concentration (Hb), mean corpuscular volume (MCV) and serum iron (Fe) were 9.11 g/dl, 65.41 fL and 19.33 fig/dl, in case group; and 12.6 g/dl, 75.18 fL and 78.28 j^g/dl, in control group, respectively. The case and control groups showed no significant difference in their mean age when complementary semisolid foods were started for them (/M).058), but they had a statistically meaningful difference in the amounts of received medicinal iron (P0.001). Conclusion: Inadequate and/or irregular medicinal-iron intake since the age of 4-6 months was reported in many cases of iron deficiency anemia. Supplementary food alone can not prevent iron deficiency anemia. Regular administration of medicinal iron at enough daily dosage (routine iron supplementation), since 4-6 month of age is crucial for prevention of iron deficiency anemia in children.