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Effect of a nutrition education program and diet modification in iron deficient anemic boarding school adolescent girls from Southern Benin
Author(s) -
Alaofè Halimatou,
Zee John,
Dossa Romain,
O'Brien Huguette Turgeon
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.22.1_supplement.895.6
Subject(s) - medicine , transferrin saturation , nutrition education , anemia , ferritin , incidence (geometry) , serum ferritin , pediatrics , gerontology , physics , optics
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of a multi‐dietary strategy to treat IDA in adolescent girls. A quasi‐experimental design involving 34 intervention and 34 control girls aged 12 to 17 years and suffering from mild IDA was carried out in two boarding schools from southern Benin. IDA was defined as haemoglobin (Hb) between 100–120 g/L and serum ferritin (SF) <20 μg/L or serum ferritin between 20–50 μg/L plus two of the following parameters: serum iron <11 μmol/L, total iron binding capacity >68 μmol/L or transferrin saturation <20%. A 26‐week intervention including 4 weeks of nutrition education combined with an increase in the content and bioavailability of dietary iron in the cafeteria menu for 22 weeks was implemented in the intervention school, but not in the control school. After controlling for baseline variables, Hb and SF were higher (122 vs. 113g/L; P=0.0002; 32 vs. 19μg/L; P=0.04), whereas incidence of anemia (32 vs. 85%; P=0.0003) and of IDA (26 vs. 56%; P=0.04) was lower in the intervention group compared to the control group. Also, nutrition knowledge scores were significantly higher in intervention girls compared to control girls at the end of the study. No significant differences were observed in IPI and malaria status of both groups post‐intervention. These findings indicate that dietary changes to improve available dietary iron can reduce iron deficiency anemia.