Have you ever wonder if there's a connection between pregnancy and vitamin deficiency?

Now that I’m in college, I’m at an age where my friends are becoming pregnant more over the years. I see some of the women taking precautions with their diets, eating certain foods, and taking supplements. Is this new diet because they are craving certain foods or is it a concern to watch out for? This can be very frightening to a new mother during her pregnancy because she doesn’t know what to expect. With a little knowledge of what food is composed of can help to calm the soon to be mother.

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 One very vital and under looked component of foods is vitamins. Vitamins do all sorts of things for the body. For instances, vitamin A in small amounts helps with the vision, cellular growth, the production of red blood cells, immunity, and reproduction. Roughly 19 million pregnant women are diagnosed with vitamin A deficiency. By taking vitamin A supplements can decrease anemia, help to prevent premature delivery, prevent low birth rate, deformities of the infant, poor infant growth, and prevent infant and maternal mortality. 

Vitamin A is easily accessible in a well balanced diet. However, there are many factors that can lead to a vitamin A deficiency. In a recent study, scientists analyzed what factors would have an effect on the women if they could not obtain the vitamin. They looked at a large group of Chinese pregnant women. In the article, “Prevalence and influence factors of vitamin A deficiency of Chinese pregnant women”, the study divided up the women in different economic statuses and social developmental backgrounds. After that, they collected blood samples and an urine human gonadotropin test from a wide variety of the women. They ruled out certain participants due to a previous medical history with kidney disease or chronic liver disease. In addition, there were some questionnaires given out in regards to the woman’s pregnancy, age, whether they used vitamin A supplements, and other factors. As a result, only 1209 women were able to be participants in the study.

The data from the article shows that there are numerous factors that affect the pregnant mother’s ability to obtain vitamin A. They found that if the mother was from a poor and rural area, that the odds of being deficiency in vitamin A was higher compared to those woman from large cities. Another factor that was noted was the educational background of the pregnant mother. Interestingly, they found that with no college education, the mother was almost 3 times higher of vitamin A deficiency compared to a pregnant mother with a college education. Surprisingly, not many people know what is in their food and what it is composed of. With a basic understanding of nutrient and how it affects the diet of the mother and infant could easily fix the vitamin deficiency some. If the pregnant mother was never informed about the types of diets to consume than she wouldn’t know whether her diet is well balanced or not. 

Vitamin A  deficiency was also linked to the women’s income they found out. This makes sense because if the mother is not able to buy the foods and supplements needed then the mother would not have a high amount of vitamin A in her system. As well as smokers and nonsmokers were looked at for a deficiency. The article found that smokers are almost 6 times as likely to be vitamin A deficiency compared to nonsmokers. This in a way makes sense because vitamin A helps the body's immunity and with all the toxic chemicals in the cigarettes could harmfully affect the immunity of the body and ability to function correctly.

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Vitamin A deficiency is found in every country. This deficiency is becoming an issue in the public health for pregnant women. Age also comes into play in how well the body can take up the vitamins and use them. During the mother’s second and third trimester, the infant is more likely to be affected by the deficiency than in the first trimester. How can this affect the fetus? Now knowing why vitamin A is good for the body, it could affect the fetus sensory organs, immune system, the red blood count, or even the cell growth of the fetus. 

I picked this topic of pregnancy and vitamin deficiency with the interest of personally seeing a mother who was malnutrition and her child was born prematurely. Now that I have gained a better understand of how vitamins are good for the body and how it helps the mother and infant. I can now see how that mother and child were affected. The little boy was born early, he has a very weak immune system, his sensory organs and homeostasis in his body is off balanced. He is turning 5 years old this year, however his vision is very impaired, he has a fragile immune system,  and he was born with a deformity of his digestive tract. In addition, it has affected his mother’s reproductive tract and she may not be able to carry another fetus to full term. It could be due to her socioeconomic situation at the time of her pregnancy and could had play numerous factors into how the infant was developing. Maybe if she was better informed on what her body needed and had is available to her, would it had been a different story for her and her son.

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References:

Yang, C., 

Chen, J.,

 Liu, Z., 

Yun, C., 

Piao J., and 

Yang, X. (2016). 

Prevalence and influence factors of vitamin A deficiency of Chinese pregnant women. Nutrition Journal. 15. 12. pages: 1-7. Retrieve from: http://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-016-0131-7

Images from:
Ian Sands (2007) Pregnant Woman, Retrieved from flickr.  Image here
Helvetia (2008) Pregnant Women Belly, Retrieved from flickr.  Image here