Maternal depressive symptoms are not associated with child anaemia: A cross‐sectional population study in Peru, 2015

Abstract

Introduction Approximately, one in three Peruvian children aged 6 to 59 months old have anaemia. Maternal depression, which may be disabling and affect the proper care of children, is associated with chronic malnutrition in their offspring. Therefore, the aim of this study is to evaluate if there is an association between depressive symptoms of mothers with the presence of anaemia in their children. Methods Analytical cross‐sectional study of the Peruvian Demographic Health Survey 2015, which is nationally representative. Depressive symptoms were measured with the Patient Health Questionnaire‐9 (PHQ‐9) using a score of 10 as cut‐off. The presence of anaemia was measured using HemoCue® and was considered positive when the haemoglobin was less than 11 g/dl. Results Crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PR and aPR) were calculated with 95% confidence interval (CI), using generalized linear models of the Poisson family. We analysed 6683 mother–child binomials. The prevalence of anaemia in the children and depressive symptoms in women were 28.7% (95% CI: 27.3–30.2) and 6.9% (95% CI: 6.1–7.9), respectively. We found no statistically significant association between these variables in the bivariable analysis or in the different multivariable models (aPR: 1.05, 95% CI: 0.85–1.30). The sample did not have moderate or severe malnutrition. Conclusions There is no statistically significant difference between the prevalence of anaemia in children of mothers with or without depressive symptoms. We recommend continuing research in this field to determine more associate factors to childhood anaemia in order to improve primary prevention interventions. Ideally, conducting longitudinal studies such as prospectives cohorts to determine risk factors should be done.

Association between maternal depression and emotion and behavior regulation in Peruvian children: A population-based study

“…The study covariates were included according to previous reports in the literature ( Hernández-Vásquez et al, 2020 , Alarcón-Guevara et al, 2021 , Valladares-Garrido et al, 2020 , Villarreal-Zegarra et al, 2020 , Villarreal-Zegarra and Bernabe-Ortiz, 2020 , Ibanez G, Bernard JY, Rondet C, Peyre H, Forhan A, Kaminski M, Saurel-Cubizolles M-J, EDEN Mother-Child Cohort Study Group, 2015 , Hoffman et al, 2006 , Wu et al, 2020 ). The main covariates included (values of the variables are indicated in parentheses): the age of the mother (in years), level of education of the mother ([no education/elementary]/high school/college), marital status of the mother (single/cohabitation with partner/[separated/divorced/widowed]), ethnic self-identification of the mother (non-native/native), child sex (female/male), age of the child (in months), undernutrition of the child (no/yes), hemoglobin level of the child (in g/dL), breastfeeding time (in months), desired pregnancy (no/yes), adequate prenatal controls (APCs) (according to the World Health Organization (WHO) which are considered adequate when a pregnant woman has eight or more APCs) (no/yes), birth order number (continuous numerical), wealth quintile (quintile 1[richest]/quintile 2/quintile 3/quintile 4/quintile 5[poorest]), area of residence (urban/rural) and natural region (jungle/highlands/coast).…”