Serum Ferritin as a Predictor for Development of Anemia in Pregnancy: A Pilot Study

Anemia is a common problem with pregnant women around the world. There are high rates even within industrialized nations. The main cause of anemia in pregnancy is a lack of iron. There have been medical programs that give iron vitamins to all pregnant patients at the beginning of care to decrease anemia. These programs did not adequately decrease anemia in pregnancy. Many of them gave iron vitamins in doses that were low because pregnant patients sometimes have side effects to it. The next idea was to figure out which women were more at risk to get anemia and then treat them with a higher amount of iron. There are different blood tests to see how much iron stores are in the blood, but many do not work well during pregnancy. The test study staff think is the best for this is ferritin. The goal of this first small study is to see if healthcare providers can use the level of ferritin to predict anemia in pregnancy. This would then help to better screen, diagnose, and treat anemia during pregnancy. Study staff will enroll obstetric patients from the Women's Medicine Center and compare ferritin levels in these patients early in pregnancy with diagnosis of anemia later in pregnancy.