EC Nutrition

Background: Iron Deficiency Anemia (IDA) is a global public health problem in school aged children and adolescents affecting their psychomotor development and cognitive performance. Nonetheless, the magnitude of the problem among overweight and obese individuals is felt a gap in Ethiopian context. We therefore examined the issue under caption to generate evidences for some programmatic initiatives.

Objective: To examine the association of iron deficiency anemia with overweight and/or obesity among in-school adolescents in Addis Ababa.

Methods: A School based, cross-sectional study was conducted among 363 high school adolescents in Addis Ababa from March to April 2019. A multi-stage random sampling procedure was followed and Interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect socio-demographic, economic, dietary and anthropometric data. In addition, venous blood was collected for determination of serum iron, CRP & complete blood count. The anthropometric data were converted into nutritional indices using WHO Anthro-plus software. The data were then cleaned, coded, and entered into SPSS software for windows version 20 for analysis. Binary logistic regression model was employed to identify the prediction of IDA. A 5% significance level was used for the inferential statistics to guide statistical significance with 95%CI of the crude and adjusted odds ratio.

Result: The magnitude of anemia, iron deficiency and IDA was 12.9%, 16.3% and 7.4%, respectively. The proportion of mild, moderate and severe anemia was 78.7%, 19.1% and 2.1%, respectively. The proportion of anemia was significantly higher among overweight/obese adolescents than those who had normal weight (AOR = 4.2; 95% CI = 1.21 - 17.29). Consumption of meat, egg and fish > once per day (AOR = 0.13; 95% CI = 0.02 - 0.88), daily snack consumption (AOR = 4.7; 95% CI = 1.10 - 21.7), and duration of menses > 5 days/month (AOR = 4.4; 95% CI = 1.13 - 21.2) were also associated with occurrence of IDA in this age groups.

Conclusion: IDA is a mild public health problem in-school adolescent and was significantly associated with overweight and/or obesity. To reduce the problem under caption, a multi-sectorial approach involving health, nutritional and educational sectors through targeting the above predictors through appropriate nutrition counseling, early detection of the problem and treatment of anemia is recommended.

 Keywords: In-School Adolescents; Iron Deficiency Anemia; Overweight/Obesity; Predictors; Ethiopia

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