Multivitamins And Pregnancy

Multivitamins have always been known to be useful as dietary supplements and promote healthy living. Now, a recent research on multivitamins has found them to be beneficial for pregnant women. The new study propagates the idea that if pregnant women are given multivitamins, they are likely to considerably lower the perils related to babies born with poor weight.

The research, described as a meta-analysis, claims to have collected information from 13 earlier researches that compared new born babies whose mothers were given multivitamin supplements with the infants whose mothers only took prenatal iron-folic dietary enhancements or a placebo (dummy pill). Recently, the findings of the research undertaken by Dr. Prakesh Shah and his associates at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto were printed in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

According to Dr. Prakesh Shah, poor birth weight and associated impediments are deemed to be the most widespread reasons for the death of children below the age of five years all over the world. At the same time, Dr. Shah asserts that it is possible to lower the scale of the undersized and poor weight births by as much as 17 per cent.

The research paper published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal states that it was found that women who were given micronutrients during their pregnancy gave birth to infants whose weight at the time of birth was 54 grams or two ounces more compared to the infants born to women who did not take multivitamins, but only iron-folic supplements during their pregnancy. The authors of the research paper guess that around 75 million infants are born in developing nations every year and most of the mothers of these babies at the most receive only iron-folic acid supplements all through their pregnancy. In addition, the researchers observed that if all these women are given multi-micronutrient supplements for the period of their pregnancy, according to a modest estimation, it may possibly help to avoid 1.5 million underweight births around the world each year.

However, commenting on the findings of the research undertaken by Dr. Prakesh, two physicians from at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan reminded that the study suffered from a number of drawbacks. In fact, Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta and Dr. Batool Azra Haider of the Aga Khan University pointed out that the plans of action regarding the prevention and control of maternal malnutrition and micronutrient insufficiencies are top on the agenda of pre and ante-natal care in the developing nations. Nevertheless, the two physicians agreed that the present strategies followed by these countries needed numerous intercessions.

Talking about the interventions in the strategies, doctors from the Aga Khan University felt the necessity of prepared food supplements or provisional transfer of cash to tackle the food insecurity of the families where there may be pregnant women, micronutrient involvement to take care of anemia caused by scarcity of iron in the blood stream and other shortcomings. At the same time, Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta and Dr. Batool Azra Haider emphasized on the actions that need to be initiated to lower the yoke of maternal contagions/ infections such as HIV and malaria.