[Iron supplementation during pregnancy. Standards and alternatives].

The requirements of iron during gestation are very high and it is difficult to meet them, especially in women who go into a pregnancy with an exhausted storage of the mineral. In industrialized societies there is controversy regarding the usefulness or lack of supplementation. In some cases one recommends a routine iron supplementation during the second half of the pregnancy, in order to improve the situation of all women. Another tendency, keeping in mind the increased capacity for absorption seen during the gestation, is the selective supplementation of iron only after assessing the situation of the pregnant woman. A third alternative that may be useful in the future is that of monitoring the iron status (during the pregnancy and during the entire fertile period of the entire female population), increasing the consumption of foods that are rich in iron (meat, fish, fortified cereals), improving the bioavailability of the ingested iron (drinking orange juice with the meal or eating meat), and using weekly supplements of iron rather than daily supplements, as the former type of supplementation has an effect that is similar to that seen with a daily supplementation, and lacks many of the side effects of this (noncompliance with the standard, gastrointestinal trouble, decreased absorption of other nutrients).