Study of cord blood zinc level in term AGA & term SGA newborns

Introduction: In India, the incidence of low birth weight babies is around 28%. About two third of the low birth weight babies are term-small for gestational age babies and one third are preterm babies. Low birth weight babies might have low nutritional reserve, especially the micronutrients, out of which zinc is an important one. This study is done to find if there is any association between cord blood zinc level and birth weight in term SGA and AGA babies.Materials & Methods: This is a Prospective cross sectional study which was done in 100 newborns, in which 50 were term SGA and 50 were term AGA newborns. The period of the study was one year. Our study included term SGA as cases and term AGA as controls. After obtaining informed consent from the parents, cord blood sample for serum zinc was collected from term-SGA and term-AGA babies for serum zinc level estimation and sent to our central laboratory. Result: The mean cord blood zinc level in AGA was 97.15 and 90.89 in SGA and there is statistical significance in the cord blood zinc level between AGA and SGA groups.Conclusion: The study concludes that there is a significant correlation in the cord blood zinc level between the term AGA and term SGA neonates.