Parity May Determine Levels of Some Antioxidant Minerals in Pregnancy: An Experience From Rural South‑Eastern Nigeria

Background: Maternal micronutrient and antioxidant status is critical to fetal growth and survival. Poor socioeconomic conditions in the rural areas portend undernutrition with inevitable micronutrients deficiencies. Presently, there are conflicting reports on the serum levels of some mineral antioxidants during pregnancy. Aim: To determine the serum concentrations of some antioxidant minerals - copper and manganese, in rural pregnant women of different parities. Subjects and Methods: This is a cross‑sectional study, involving 195 rural pregnant women, in different trimesters and parities. They were recruited from antenatal clinics of some rural health centres in south‑eastern Nigeria. The controls were 50 age‑matched, nonpregnant, nulliparous, and apparently healthy women, who were not menstruating at the time of sample collection. Results: The results showed that copper was nonsignificantly lower (P = 0.14), while manganese was significantly higher (P < 0.001) in pregnant women than nonpregnant women. Over gestation, there was no significant changes (P = 0.081; F = 2.268; r2 = 0.028) in copper concentrations as pregnancy progressed while manganese increased significantly (P < 0.001; F = 18.370; r2 = 0.195), and remained relatively so, throughout gestation. However, both antioxidants increased progressively and significantly as parity increased (P < 0.001).Conclusion: Parity influences the levels of these antioxidant minerals in pregnancy and therefore should play significant role in the determination of the actual dose of supplements, if need be, of these antioxidants during pregnancy. Indeed assessment and supplementation of copper and manganese during pregnancy should be individualized to avoid deleterious fetomaternal consequences.Keywords: Copper, manganese, parity, pregnancy, rural are