Efficacy of intermittent iron supplementation in the control of iron deficiency anaemia in developing countries : an analysis of experience; final report to the Micronutrient Initiative

This report presents an analysis of the efficacy of intermittent iron supplementation in the control of iron deficiency anemia in developing countries. It is based on the analysis of results of 22 completed trials of iron supplementation. Out of the 22 14 trials including 5100 individuals contain complete data sets. For the other 8 trials only summary statistics collected from abstracts final reports or directly supplied by the involved principal investigators were available. The results in the individual projects are grouped into three categories: pregnant women school children and adolescents and preschool children. Overall it was found that both daily and weekly iron supplementation are efficacious. However weekly iron supplementation is likely to be less effective than daily administration except in situations where supervision is feasible with weekly regimens and not with daily supplementation. Moreover weekly supplementation was found to be disadvantageous during pregnancy and in situations where the baseline prevalence of anemia is very high. Lastly future research priorities should be directed to development of other strategies to effectively improve utilizable iron intakes or to greatly improve compliance in direct supplementation programs daily or weekly.