Author
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JAHOOR, FAROOK - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC) |
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Submitted to: Food and Nutrition Bulletin
Publication Type: Other Publication Acceptance Date: 11/1/2012 Publication Date: 6/1/2013 Citation: Jahoor, F. 2013. Arginine production during pregnancy: A study of Jamaican, Indian and American women. Food and Nutrition Bulletin. 34(2):275-276. Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: Over 95% of all low birth weight (LBW) infants are born in the developing world, amounting to more than 20 million per year. India single-handedly contributes more to that number than any other country or region in the world, with LBW prevalence at 30%, and LBW prevalence among teenage mothers at 83%. These high rates of LBW have consequences, including contributing to the high stunting prevalence in India of 46%. We therefore tested the hypothesis that pregnant women with low BMI and teenage girls will not be able to increase arginine production to the same extent as their normal BMI adult counterparts as pregnancy progresses to late gestation. This hypothesis was tested by measuring arginine flux in 8 pregnant Jamaican adult women and 8 teenage girls and 10 Indian adult women with normal and 10 with low BMI at the end of the first trimester, approximately 13 weeks gestation, and beginning of the third trimester, approximately 28 weeks of gestation. We found that the Jamaicans produced arginine at the end of trimester 1 and beginning of trimester 3 at the same rate as the Americans at mid-pregnancy, and the rates of both groups were significantly greater (P<0.01) than the rate of the non-pregnant Americans at 10 weeks postpartum. |
