Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency globally. Children and women of reproductive age are at a particular risk of iron deficiency. Anaemia during pregnancy is a specific risk factor for adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes. The objective of this review was to assess the impact of routine iron supplementation on maternal anaemia and perinatal outcomes. A literature search was conducted for published randomised and quasi-randomised trials on PubMed and the Cochrane Library. Only those studies were included in the review that assessed the preventive effect of iron supplementation during pregnancy. Data from selected studies were double abstracted in a standardised excel sheet. The studies were graded according to study design, limitations, intervention specifics and outcome effects. Meta-analyses were conducted where data were available from more than one study for an outcome. After screening 5209 titles, 30 studies were selected for inclusion in this review. Daily iron supplementation resulted in 69% reduction in incidence of anaemia at term in the intervention group compared with control [relative risk (RR) 0.31 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.22, 0.44]] and 66% reduction in iron deficiency anaemia at term (RR 0.44 [95% CI 0.28, 0.68]; random model) compared with no intervention/placebo. The quality grade for these outcomes was that of 'moderate' level. Routine daily iron supplementation during pregnancy resulted in a significant reduction of 20% in incidence of low birthweight in the intervention group compared with control (RR 0.80 [95% CI 0.71, 0.90]). Preventive iron supplementation during pregnancy has a significant benefit in reducing incidence of anaemia in mothers and low birthweight in neonates.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 115. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 March 2026.
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#460,547
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Outputs from Paediatric & Perinatal Epidemiology
#24
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#1,926
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Outputs of similar age from Paediatric & Perinatal Epidemiology
#1
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Altmetric has tracked 34,359,530 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,290 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.9. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 26 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its contemporaries.
