Hematological Profile of Pregnant Women in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

BACKGROUND OR OBJECTIVES: Pregnant women experience a lot of changes, which often reflect in their hematological indices. The study examines the differences in the hematological profile of pregnant and nonpregnant women in Port Harcourt, in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. METHODS: The subjects were systematically sampled, comprising of 90 pregnant and 90 non-pregnant women, with ages ranging 16 to 45 years. Five milliliters of whole blood was collected from each subject at ambient temperature using standard venepuncture techniques and three milliliters was dispensed in EDTA bottle. T-test was used to compare the mean of the parameters among the pregnant and nonpregnant women. Analysis of variance was used to compare the means for the parameters within the three trimesters. Tukey’s Post Hoc test was used to identify the trimester pairs that had significant mean difference, Hematological parameters were analyzed using Abacus380 hematological analyzer. The data obtained were coded and analysed using SPSS version 20 and data were considered significant at p≤0.05. RESULTS: Comparison of pregnant women with controls showed that Total White Blood Count TWBC), monocytes, neutrophils, Mean Cell Volume (MCV), and Mean Cell Hemoglobin (MCH) were significantly increased in pregnancy (p<0.05); while Red Blood Cell (RBC) count, hemoglobin, hematocrit and Mean Cell Hemoglobin concentration were significantly decreased (p<0.01). The following hematological parameters showed significant mean variation within the 3 trimesters: MCH (F=3.59, p=0.03) and MCHC (F=16.85, p<0.01). MCHC showed significant difference between first versus second trimesters (p=<0.01) and 1st vs. 3rd trimesters (p=<0.01). CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSLATION The lower hematocrit and hemoglobin level of pregnant women when compared with the non-pregnant controls implies that there is need for more emphasis on the importance of prenatal vitamin supplementation during the antenatal period, perhaps leveraging prenatal counselling sessions. Proper supplementation may avert anemia in pregnancy, and consequently, the poor birth outcomes. Key words: Hematological Profile • Pregnant Women • Nigeria • Pregnancy   © 2019 Mba et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.