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Personalized iron supply for pregnant women to ensure normal iron levels in their breast milk
– Reported, January 22, 2013
Because the characteristics of all body fluids depends on patients health status, is it possible that disadvantaged and socially vulnerable mothers may have lower amounts of iron in their breast milk, and that their babies receive lower content of the mineral for their normal growth and development. Assuring a preventive treatment of the mother might solve this problem.
Iron deficiency is one of the major health problems among children less than 1 year old . Maternal anaemia leads to anaemia in newborn infants. Iron deficiency can have deleterious effects on behavior, immune system, and mental and physical development. Prevention of anaemia in newborns should therefore be a priority for public health policies.
Although substantial prevalence rates among disadvantaged children have been reported, official programs attempted to correct this iron deficiency anaemia by delivering iron-fortified milk and other dietary supplements available free of charge to the underprivileged population in many countries.However, this point is controversial since even if official policies enhance the breastfeeding during the first 6 months of life of newborns , the quality of that breast milk will depend on the mothers health and nutrition.
Iron deficiency is frequent in children under 1 year old in many developing countries like Argentina. Assuring iron prophilaxis and treatment to mothers during the pregnancy period may reduce this health problem.
Especially in Argentina, the access to iron treatment is guaranteed by the Ministry of Health, by REMEDIAR program, which provides the Health Centres enough iron for all population. However, although medicine is available, treatment is still not assured since patients must have access to health centres to obtain the treatment.
Nowadays, because of the convenience of mothers, commercials milk formulations have been used (and abused) to feed their newborns. However, official recommendations are in favor of maintaining exclusive breastfeeding until six months of life, as it does clearly provide immunological benefits for the children.It is therefore extremely important to ensure the best possible quality and highest iron content as possible of breast milk.
The present study demonstrated that iron content in breast milk is impaired when mothers have iron-deficiency during the pregnancy period. Even if mothers had anaemia during pregnancy, our data shows that a program that assures a personalized iron treatment, improves breast milk iron content.
An official program that guarantees iron prophylaxis and treatment to pregnant women will increase breast milk iron levels reducing children problems associate to iron deficiency during the first year of their life.
CREDITS:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
GH Marin,N Mestorino, J Errecalde, B Huber, A Uriarte, and J Orchuela.
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