Salt iodination insufficient to boost iodine status in pregnant women

Despite policy advancement and nutritional monitoring, salt iodination seems to be an insufficient measure to provide the adequate level of iodine to pregnant women, reports a recent meta-analysis.

Drawing from the online databases of Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, Embase, and Lilacs, as well as from grey literature, the researchers assessed a total of 61 observational articles eligible for quantitative synthesis. The resulting cumulative population included 163,021 pregnant women.

Pooled analysis revealed that globally, 53 percent of pregnant women had insufficient iodine intake, defined as <250 µg/day. Subgroup analysis according to geographic region revealed that iodine insufficiency was much more common in women in Europe (69 percent) and Eurasia (69 percent) than comparators in Asia (46 percent).

In turn, iodine insufficiency among pregnant women was more prevalent in countries with an overall reported insufficient status than in countries where iodine status was good adequate (86 percent vs 61 percent). No other subgroup analysis revealed such strong trends.

In terms of quality, heterogeneity of evidence was high across all analyses, though meta-regression could identify no variable that explained such heterogeneity. The funnel plot was also asymmetric, as confirmed by the Egger test (p=0.009).

“Other steps including iodine supplementation must be taken to improve the nutritional care of pregnant women and reduce the risk of iodine deficiency disorders to the foetus,” the researchers said.