Food & Nutrition

Arab Journal of Food & Nutrition
108. Evaluation of the Effect of Nutrition Intervention Program on Nutritional
Status of a Group of Women with Dietary Vitamin B 12 Deficiency (2009)
Dima AI.Kilani\ University of Jordan
Supervisor: Dr. Khader E1-Masri
Vitamin B 12 deficiency is prevalent in Jordan, while nutritional vitamin B 12
deficiency is thought to occur rare, and few studies had been conducted to evaluate the
efficacy treatment of vitamin B 12 deficiency by the dietary intervention. Thus, the
main objectives of this study are to assess the nutritional status of women diagnosed
with vitamin B 12 deficiency, to determine if the deficiency of vitamin B 12 is due to
nutritional factors, and to evaluate the efficacy of the nutrition intervention program in
improving serum vitamin B 12 levels.
Twenty four vitamin B 12 deficient women were enrolled in the study; the study
was carried out in two periods, which are the pre-intervention period for two months,
and the intervention period for four months. The pre-intervention period was the
control period; it provided the study with the indicators which included serum vitamin
B 12 level, health status, socioeconomic indicators, anthropometric indicators, daily life
style, eating habits, nutrient intakes, and vitamin B 12 knowledge scores. The
intervention period was the period of the application of the nutrition intervention
program; it involved providing the subjects with both nutritional information about
vitamin B 12 and planned diets. In the intervention period the measured indicators were
serum vitamin B 12 level, vitamin B 12 intake, vitamin B 12 knowledge scores, and
anthropometric measurement including both height and weight and BMI was
calculated.
In the pre-intervention period, serum level vitamin B 12 was 253 ± 13.3 pmol/L.
Socioeconomic indicators showed that study group was with low to medium
socioeconomic status, and with high educational level. Weight and BM1
measurements indicate that the study group was overweight. The nutritional
knowledge scores and intake of vitamin B 12 was found to be low. In the intervention
period, serum vitamin B 12 level was significantly increased to 307.2 ± 14.3 pmol/L
(P