Food & Nutrition

Arab Journal of Food & Nutrition
22. The Effect of Dietary Counseling and Iron Supplementation on Growth
and Nutritional Iron Status in a Sample of Exclusively Breastfed Jordanian
Infants from Four to Six Months of Age (1996)
Hussein Saleh Qazaq\ University of Jordan
Supervisor: Dr. Ahmad M. Faqih
The effect of different strategies like exclusive breastfeeding, dietary counseling
and medicinal iron supplementation on the growth and iron status of 68 of 3-monthold
infants who had been exclusively breastfed up to 4-to 6- months of age was
assessed. Iron status of infants was determined by performing complete blood count
and plasma ferritin at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months of infant’s age , and hence the prevalence
of nutritional anemia (NA), depletion of iron stores (DIS) , iron deficiency (ID)
without anemia and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) was determined for both sexes:
males and females.
Infant’s growth was assessed by measuring nude weight, recumbent length and
head circumference and their derived indices : weight for age (W/A) height for age
(H/A) and weight for height (W/H).
Exclusive breastfeeding was followed up to 4 to 6 months of age beyond which
dietary counseling and iron supplementation strategies were applied.
At 3 mouths of age, none of the infants developed either ID without anemia or
IDA, while 1.5% had DIS and about 3% had NA. At 6 months of age, 2% of the
infants had ID without anemia, 4.4% had IDA, 134% had DIS and about 23%
developed NA. None of the infants suffered from underweight, stunting or wasting
either at 3 or 6 months age.
The results indicate that the strategy of iron supplementation that was started at 6
months of age with a prophylactic dose of 1mg/kg/day was the best in terms of the
prevalence of NA (5.9%) and IDA (0.0%), followed by the Strategy of dietary
counseling with NA, 26% and IDA, 13%) , while in the control group the prevalence
of NA and IDA was the highest :33.3% and 19%, respectively. None of the infants,
anemic or non-anemic suffered from wasting, stunting or underweight.
No significant association was detected between the prevalence of NA and the
studied socioeconomic factors. The duration of EBF was significantly associated with
the prevalence of NA with an inverse relationship, the longer the duration of EBF, up
to 5-6 months of age, the lower the prevalence of NA (p < 0.013).
No significant differences were detected between males and females regarding the
prevalence of NA during the period of 9-1 2 months of age, while at 6 months of age, NA was
significantly more prevalent in males than females.
170
Volume 11, No. 25, 2011
169