Robizon Tsiklauri*, N Kazakhashvili, L Jijeishvili and E Shavgulidze

NCDC Georgia, UG, TSMU- American MD program, Tbilisi, Georgia

*Corresponding Author: Robizon Tsiklauri, NCDC Georgia, UG, TSMU- American MD program, Tbilisi, Georgia.

Received: December 01, 2021; Published: January 31, 2022

Abstract

Several assessments of nutritional status have been done in the recent past in Georgia, but they did not contribute substantially to the estimation of nationwide prevalence rates of nutritional outcomes. In fact, until 2015 there was not any effective surveillance sys­tem in Georgia, which could provide with reliable data for developing national strategy of micronutrient deficiency elimination and improving the nutritional status of population. For nutrition surveillance system had been used sen­tinel surveillance approach, selecting 4 regions and 1 sentinel site for pregnant in each Region (pregnant health facilities).

Methodology: Iron deficiency and folate deficiency was studded in pregnant women. Iron deficiency was measured using ferritin concentration in plasma with cut-off points of < 15 μg/l. Below 3.0 ng/ml was considered as a cut-off point of Folate (in plasma) deficiency in pregnant (1st trimester). For anemia detection has been used Hb cut-off points of < 11 g/dl.

Findings: Blood laboratory studies on micronutrient deficiencies indicate that more than half of studded pregnant women (n = 1203) are iron deficient (57%), almost a third have folate deficiency (28%), and one-fifth already have severe anemia (20%). The rate of neural tube defects per 1000 births averages 3.7 (data are taken only from the sentinel sites involved in the study).

Conclusion: Study results show that iron deficiency is high prevalent and folate deficiency was quite common during the 1st trimester of pregnancy in Georgia. And the rate of neural tube defects per 1000 births is about 7 times high (3.7) compering with WHO references (must not be more than 0.5 per 1000 births).

Keywords: NTDs; Nutrition; Georgia

References

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Citation

Citation: Robizon Tsiklauri. “Folate Deficiency Prevalence and Correlation with Neural Tube Defects Formation in Georgia". Acta Scientific Nutritional Health 6.2 (2022): 121-130.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Robizon Tsiklauri. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.