Biomedical Letters

Comparison of dietary iron intake with recommended dietary allowance among pregnant women belonging to different socio-economic strata

Minal Akram 1*, Haseeb Akram 2, Shahnai Basharat 1, Syed Amir Gilani 1

1 University Institute of Diet & Nutritional Sciences, The University of Lahore, Lahore Pakistan.

2 District Head Quarter Hospital, Chiniot, Pakistan

Abstract

Iron deficiency is considered as one of the most common nutritional problem in both developed and developing countries. Anemia from iron deficiency affects almost two-third of pregnant women in developing countries. The study was conducted to compare the dietary iron intake with recommended dietary allowance among pregnant women belonging to different socioeconomic strata. The study was designed cross sectional. A total of 150 pregnant women aged 15-39 years were selected for three months study. The sample was selected from three different hospitals namely, Sheikh Zayed Hospital, National Hospital and Medical Centre and Hameed Latif Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan. The included parameters for this study are information about age, height, body weight, socioeconomic status and evaluation of hemoglobin level. A 24 hours dietary recall method was used for three days to compute the nutrient intake and iron intake. The participants were asked to recall three different days of food intake including two days from week and one from weekend. Statistical analysis was performed by using the Program Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 22). According to socioeconomic data, 64% participants were belonged to upper class, 48% and 38% were belonged to middle class and lower class respectively. The descriptive statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied. The mean dietary iron intake was 18.09±0.9 mg/day, 20.2±1.2 mg/day and 23.03±0.01 mg/day in lower, middle and upper classes respectively. There was a significant difference (p < 0.05) in nutrient intake among different socioeconomic strata. The level of hemoglobin has variation from 8.9 mg/dl to ˃11 mg/dl among different socioeconomic strata. The study concluded that the dietary iron consumption was lower than the recommended dietary allowance among participants of different socioeconomic strata.