Wheat flour fortification with iron for reducing anaemia and improving iron status in populations.
Abstract
Anaemia is a condition where the number of red blood cells (and consequently their oxygen-carrying capacity) is insufficient to meet the body's physiologic needs. Fortification of wheat flour is deemed a useful strategy to reduce anaemia in populations. To determine the benefits and harms of wheat flour fortification with iron alone or with other vitamins and minerals on anaemia, iron status and health-related outcomes in populations over two years of age. We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, and other databases up to 4 September 2019. We included cluster- or individually randomised controlled trials (RCT) carried out among the general population from any country aged two years and above. The interventions were fortification of wheat flour with iron alone or in combination with other micronutrients. Trials comparing any type of food item prepared from flour fortified with iron of any variety of wheat were included. Two review authors independently screened the search results and assessed the eligibility of studies for inclusion, extracted data from included studies and assessed risk of bias. We followed Cochrane methods in this review. Our search identified 3048 records, after removing duplicates. We included nine tria...Continue Reading
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Patterns of intra-cluster correlation from primary care research to inform study design and analysis
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