Iron and folate status before pregnancy and anemia during pregnancy.

Background: A lack of information about the role that iron and folate stores (erythrocyte folate) play on the anemia incidence in pregnant women.

Objective: To evaluate the predictive value of ferritin and erythrocyte folate before pregnancy in relationship to the incidence of anemia throughout pregnancy.

Methods: Thirty-five non-anemic non-pregnant women were evaluated 1 or 2 months before the pregnancy. After becoming pregnant they were evaluated every 4 weeks starting in the 8th week of pregnancy until 1 month post-partum. Every evaluation included determination of hemoglobin, ferritin and erythrocyte folate.

Results: When the women started gestation with an insufficient iron store (<20 microg/l), the trend was to present anemia at significantly earlier gestational ages, in such a way that at week 20 of gestation almost 60% of the women with an inadequate store had anemia and only 25% of the women with an adequate store had this condition. On the other hand, the pregestational erythrocyte folate did not predict anemia incidence.

Conclusions: Pregestational ferritin concentration predicts value of incidence of anemia throughout pregnancy.