Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

79 IRON NUTRITION IN CHILEAN BREAST FED INFANTS

1981; Springer Nature; Volume: 15; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1203/00006450-198102000-00136

1530-0447

Eva Hertrampf, María Luisa Dinamarca, S Llaguno, A Stekel,

Indigenous Health and Education

Recent evidence suggests that iron in human milk has a high bio-availability and that breast fed term infants are protected from developing iron deficiency during the first 6 months of life. Iron nutrition was determined in healthy term infants of low socioeconomic condition receiving breast milk as the only milk source for 4, 6 and 9 months (60, 70 and 31 subjects respectively) and compared with infants fed non fortified cow's milk. At 4 months, breast fed infants had a better iron nutrition status presenting significant differences with the control group in serum iron (69* ± 36 vs 43 ± 16 ug/dl, p<.005), transferrin saturation (18.4 ± 10.3 vs 11.2 ± 4.4%, p<.005) free erythrocyte protoporphyrin (76 ± 23 vs 88 ± 31 ug/dl RBC, p <.025) and serum ferritin (44.7# ± 1.1 vs 22.3 ± 1.1 ug/ml, p <.005). These differences no longer existed at 6 and 9 months of age, when both groups had a high incidence of iron deficiency. This study indicates that chilean infants fed breast milk need iron supplementation after 4 months of age. * mean ± 1 SD # geometric mean ± 1 SEM