Maternal Anemia in Various Trimesters and its Effect on Newborn Weight and Maturity: An Observational Study

BACKGROUND: Anemia has been a very important nutritional disorder in the world. India has reported high prevalence of anemia in pregnancy. Most of the articles have reported an adverse pregnancy outcome related to anemia. Of late, reports are emerging suggesting anemia could be indeed beneficial. Apart from that, there was no consistency in the timing of hemoglobin considered for analysis. Hence, we designed an observational study to look into these aspects. METHODS: 1000 mothers admitted for delivery were recruited and their hemoglobin was measured. Hemoglobin in previous trimesters was noted from their antenatal record. We followed up these mothers till delivery and looked into the gestation and birth weight of the babies. Descriptive statistics was used for baseline characteristics. Comparison of means was done using Student's t-test. Qualitative variables were compared using Fisher's exact test. RESULTS: More than 50% of the mothers were anemic at some point of time during their pregnancy and 39% of the mothers were anemic throughout. Mean birth weight of babies born to anemic mothers was marginally lower compared to that of babies born to nonanemic mothers. This difference was statistically significant. There was 6.5% increase in the incidence of low birth weight babies and 11.5% increase in preterm deliveries in mothers who were anemic in their third trimester. CONCLUSIONS: The incidence of low birth weight babies was significantly more in mothers who were anemic in their third trimester. Preterm deliveries occurred more frequently in mothers who were anemic in their second and third trimesters. Higher hemoglobin did not show any effect on either birth weight or gestation in our study.