Vitamin A supplementation for postpartum women

Abstract

In areas where vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is a public health concern, the maternal dietary intake of vitamin A may be not sufficient to meet either the maternal nutritional requirements, or those of the breastfed infant, due the low retinol concentrations in breast milk. To evaluate the effects of vitamin A supplementation for postpartum women on maternal and infant health. We searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group's Trials Register (8 February 2016), LILACS (1982 to December 2015), Web of Science (1945 to December 2015), and the reference lists of retrieved studies. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) or cluster‐randomised trials that assessed the effects of vitamin A supplementation for postpartum women on maternal and infant health (morbidity, mortality and vitamin A nutritional status). Two review authors independently assessed trials for inclusion, conducted data extraction, assessed risk of bias and checked for accuracy. We assessed the quality of the evidence using the GRADE approach. Fourteen trials of mainly low or unclear risk of bias, enrolling 25,758 women and infant pairs were included. The supplementation schemes included high, single or double doses of vitamin A (200,000 to 400,000 internation units (IU)), or 7.8 mg daily beta‐carotene compared with placebo, no treatment, other (iron); or higher (400,000 IU) versus lower dose (200,000 IU). In all trials, a considerable proportion of infants were at least partially breastfed until six months.