Prevalence of Iron Deficiency Anemia Among Iranian Pregnant Women; A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Introduction: anemia, particularly iron deficiency anemia (ida), is the mostcommon hematological disorder during pregnancy with considerable complications inboth mothers and fetuses. the estimation of anemia prevalence is an important step forhealth policy makers. despite being considered a hot topic in epidemiological studiesin iran for the last twenty years, lack of a comprehensive overview on the findingsencouraged the authors to carry out this study.materials and methods: all published papers in main national and internationaldatabases were systematically searched for some specific keywords to find the relatedstudies between the years 1993 and 2007. all published studies which had reported theprevalence of anemia were included in the study except studies on refugees, patientsundergoing hemodialysis, patients with thalassemia or cancer or other selective subpopulations.two trained reviewers independently assessed the inclusion/exclusioncriteria and the quality of the selected papers, summarized them and eventuallyanalyzed the data.results: ten eligible papers including 11,037 participants were entered into theanalysis. the maximum and minimum reported prevalence rates of anemia duringpregnancy were 4.3% and 21.5%, respectively. the overall estimate of anemiaprevalence in iranian pregnant women was 13.6 (95% ci: 8.3 - 18.9). excluding theonly out-layer from the meta-analysis, the overall estimated prevalence was 12.4%(95% ci: 9.6% - 17.9%).conclusion: the prevalence of anemia in iranian women during pregnancy isconsiderably lower than that of most emro countries or the one reported by whofor iran (> 40%) which had been performed on a small group 16 years ago. the lowerprevalence rate of anemia in pregnant women versus the regional rates could be due tothe improvements of the national health system and prenatal programs in recent years.