Effects of Gestational Age on Serum Levels of Some Antioxidant Micronutrients in Rural Areas of South-Eastern Nigeria

Oxidative stress in pregnancy reduces immunity and predisposes pregnant women to many diseases, prompting the need for antioxidants’ supplementations. This cross-sectional study was undertaken to make more comprehensive evaluation of levels of antioxidant micronutrients in different trimesters in uncomplicated pregnancy in rural setting and establish correlation between gestational age and antioxidant micronutrients.Subjects were 195 pregnant women in different trimesters, attending antenatal clinics for the first time in their current pregnancies while controls were 50 age-matched, non-pregnant women from the same environment. Vitamins (A, C and E) were estimated spectrophotometrically while trace elements (Cu, Mn, Se and Zn) were determined using atomic absorption spectroscopy.Our results showed that there were statistically significant changes in the values of most of the antioxidant micronutrients from the patients when compared with those from the controls. Only copper did not show significant change (p=0.141), manganese increased significantly (p=0.001) while others decreased significantly (p<0.001 each) in pregnancy. There was no correlation between these parameters and gestational age except vitamin C that showed negative correlation (r2=0.968; p=0.016). The results showed that antioxidant micronutrients decrease significantly during pregnancy in rural areas. We advocate for governments’ intermittent intervention programmes for antenatal care in these rural areas to augment their antioxidants’ supplementations.