A study to assess the effectiveness of probiotic supplementation on level of anaemia among adolescent girls studying at selected school Tiruvannamalai

A study to assess the effectiveness of Probiotic supplementation on level of Anaemia among adolescent girls studying at selected school, Tiruvannamalai. Introduction : Anemia is a major public health problem worldwide and is often ignored in both developed and developing countries. Preschool children, pregnant women and adolescents constitute vulnerable group of Anaemia. According to World Health Organization (2010), 4-5 billion people (66-80%) of the world’s population, may be iron deficient. Among 2 billion people, over 30% of the world’s population are Anaemic, mainly due to iron deficiency. In total, 800,000 (1.5 percent) of deaths worldwide are attributable to iron deficiency. Adolescence is a period of transition between child hood & adult hood, which begins from the age of 10 years to 19 years that is the second decade of life; they remain a largely neglected vulnerable group, difficult-to-measure, and hard-to-reach population in which the needs of adolescent girls are often ignored. Iron requirements peak during adolescent period due to rapid growth and increase in blood volume. As adolescence is a vulnerable period, it has been focused by existing programmes to offset the added burden like menstrual blood loss, which precipitates the crisis often. Moreover, iron deficiency may be caused by parasitic infections, poor iron containing diet, poor absorption of iron even though the consumption of iron is normal. This study highlights the significance of Probiotic supplementation in enhancing the absorption of iron in adolescent girls .Probiotics creates an acidic environment for the absorption of iron, that increases the hemoglobin level and hence decreases the prevalence of Anaemia. OBJECTIVES : To assess the effectiveness of probiotic supplementation on the level of Anaemia among adolescent girls studying at selected school, Tiruvannamalai. DESIGN : Pre-test and Post-test design of Basic experimental design which comes under True experimental design. SETTING : Municipal Girls Higher Secondary School, located at Tiruvannamalai. SAMPLING TECHNIQUE : Simple Random Sampling Technique was used to select the Anaemic adolescent girls. 30 were assigned to experimental group and 30 to control group. PARTICIPANTS : 60 Anaemic adolescent girls between 15-18 years age, who fulfilled the inclusive criteria. INTERVENTION : Probiotic supplementation named Yakult, per bottle contains 65 ml of contents, which contains 6.5 Billion of Lactobacillus cascei strain Shirota, which was administered at 1.30 pm after lunch to the adolescent girls. MEASUREMENT AND TOOL : The level of Anaemia was assessed using cyanmethemoglobin method, and graded by WHO Anaemia grading scale. RESULTS: In comparison of the pre test and post test level of Anaemia among adolescent girls in experimental group, revealed that the calculated paired ‘t’ value t = 12.717 was found to be statistically significant at p<0.001 level. This clearly shows that the implementation of Probiotic supplementation had shown a significant reduction in the post test level of Anaemia among adolescent girls in the experimental group. In comparison of post test level of Anaemia among adolescent girls between the experimental and control group revealed that the calculated unpaired ‘t’ value of t=8.872 was found to be statistically significant at p