Prevalence of anemia and iron deficiency: association with body mass index in women of Brazilian Midwest.

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of anemia and iron deficiency, to analyze the correlation of hematological indices with pre-gestational / gestational body mass, and the behavior of these indices according to the gestational age. Method: Cross-sectional study with 146 pregnant women attending public prenatal care service in Cuiabá city, state of Mato Grosso, Midwest of Brazil, from May 2008 to May 2009. Hematological indices were collected and related to each other and with the body mass index. The behavior of hematological indices was analyzed according to the gestational age. Pearson's coefficient correlation was used to assess association between variables. For these tests, it was considered the significance level of 5% (p <0.05). Results: The prevalence of anemia ranged from 3.4% to 4.8%, considering the values for hemoglobin, hematocrit and mean corpuscular volume. However, the prevalence of changes in iron stores indices ranged from 11.0% for transferrin to 39.0% for ferritin. Statistically significant positive correlations were: hemoglobin and hematocrit (0.85), iron and transferrin saturation index(0.75). It was observed a constant mean corpuscular volume, hematocrit and hemoglobin, and decrease in these indices in the end of 27 weeks of gestation. BMI showed negative correlation with serum iron. Conclusion: The prevalence of anemia by hemoglobin levels was low, but indicators of iron stores showed higher prevalence of iron deficiency. Among the iron stores indexes were more strongly correlated with each other were serum iron and transferrin saturation index, suggesting that their combination with other hematological indices could better characterize the iron deficiency anemia. The BMI and iron were negatively correlated.