CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Introduction: Iron deficiency is the most prevalent nutritional deficiency and the main cause of anemia. Although there is a consensus on iron supplementation as a preventive strategy for anemia in infants, there is a poor adherence due mainly to mild gastrointestinal adverse effects and low prescription rates from pediatricians. On the other hand, the excess of iron can lead to genomic instability with structural and functional alterations in proteins, lipids and DNA. Weekly administration of iron has been proposed as an alternative with similar efficacy and higher effectiveness in older children and pregnant women, but sufficient evidence for infants is lacking.Objetive: To compare weekly versus daily administration of iron for prevention of anemia in 6 months old infants, and analyze the impact og genomic instability . HypothesisWeekly supplementation is more effective than daily supplementation in the prevention of infant anemia, due to the higher level of adherence and the lower incidence of adverse effects. In addition, a lower level of genomic instability is expected to be produced.Material and methods: Controlled and randomized clinical trial. Infants who are treated at the Health Observatory of the Pediatric Research and Development Institute of the Children's Hospital of La Plata will participate and will be grouped according to exclusive breastfeeding (LME), or mixed feeding and intervention will be randomized : one third of the infants that are exclusively breast fed will not receive iron, the second third will receive iron weekly and the last third will receive iron daily. Half of the infants that take infant formula will receive iron weekly and the other half will receive iron daily. Anemia, nutritional status of iron and genomic stability will be evaluated before the start of supplementation (3 months) and at 6 months old. The study was approved by IDIP´s Institutional Review Board. Registered at ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT03359447.