Suco fortificado com ferro na prevenção e tratamento da anemia em pré-escolares

Abstract

Iron deficiency anemia is the largest nutritional deficiency in the world, which mainly affects infants and preschool children. The World Health Organization recommends that iron deficiency should be combatted through nutritional education associated with measures to increase iron consumption, drug supplementation and fortification of foods with iron. This study evaluated the effectiveness of iron-fortified juice in preventing and treating iron deficiency anemia in preschool children. It was a randomized clinical trial carried out in two early childhood education centers. 110 children aged 36 to 48 months were subjected to the study, for 16 weeks, 50 students from the School received juice fortified with 15mg of elemental iron, which is equivalent to 0.6ml of ferrous sulfate per child, from Monday to Friday (Intervention group) and 60 children from school B received the same unfortified juice. In school A, the initial Hb concentration increased from 11.61 ± 1.49 g/dL, to 12.09 g/dL ± 1.01, after the intervention with fortified juice, with p = 0.0314; 12 children were anemic at the beginning of the study, and after the intervention 7, that is, 5 of these children were treated, in school B, control group, the Hb concentration was 11.66 g/dL± 0.741, to 11.81 g /dL± 0.822, with p = 0.32; In this group, 6 participants were anemic at the beginning of the study, increasing to 9 at the end. As it was a placebo group, this increase was not significant. In our study, fortification of juice with iron significantly increased hemoglobin concentration and decreased the prevalence of anemia.