American Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 152, Issue 6 542-547, Copyright © 2000 by Oxford University Press
P Christian, KP West Jr, SK Khatry, E Kimbrough-Pradhan, SC LeClerq, J Katz, SR Shrestha, SM Dali and A Sommer
Night blindness due to vitamin A deficiency is common during pregnancy
among women in Nepal. The authors assessed the risk of maternal death
during and after a pregnancy with night blindness among women participating
in a cluster-randomized, placebo-controlled vitamin A and beta-carotene
supplementation trial in Nepal from July 1994 to September 1997. Subjects
were 877 women with night blindness and 9,545 women without night blindness
during pregnancy. Women were followed from the time they declared that they
were pregnant through the end of the study, representing a median follow-up
of 90 weeks (interquartile range: 64-121 weeks). Mortality of night-blind
women in the placebo group was 3,601 per 100,000 pregnancies. In
comparison, the relative risk of dying among nonnight-blind women in the
placebo group was 0.26 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.13, 0.55), and the
relative risk among women with or without night blindness in the vitamin
A/beta-carotene group was 0.32 (95% CI: 0.10, 0.91) and 0.18 (95% CI: 0.09,
0.36), respectively. Night-blind women were five times (95% CI: 2.20,
10.58) more likely to die from infections than were women who were not
night blind. These findings show that night blindness during pregnancy is a
risk factor of both short- and long-term mortality among women. Vitamin
A/beta-carotene supplementation ameliorates this risk to a large extent.
ARTICLES
Night blindness during pregnancy and subsequent mortality among women in Nepal: effects of vitamin A and beta-carotene supplementation
Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
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