Abstract

The aim of the study is to assess the dietary patterns along with nutritional status of thalassemia patients at selected hospitals in Dhaka city. A cross sectional study was conducted among patients with thalassemia aged 18 to 40 years at Bangladesh Thalassemia Samity Hospital and Thalassemia hospital and institute in Dhaka city. The study assessed nutritional status by height, weight and BMI along with dietary and morbidity pattern of thalassemia. Among study population 7.7% male and 5.5% female had thalassemia major, 23.1% male and 40% female had thalassemia minor, 53.8% male and 45% female had thalassemia intermedia. Again 15.4%male as well as 46% female had Haemoglobin H. 33.3% of thalassemic patients were severely thin, 29.1% were moderately thin, 20.8% were mildly thin and 1.67% were normal in comparison of weight to height. Our research observed food consumption score and individual dietary diversity score among the patients and found that 35.8% of patients consumed acceptable low food diet, 32.5% consumed borderline food diet and only 6.7% of patients consumed acceptable high food diet. In case of individual dietary diversity score only 8.7% of patients consumed highly diversified food as various type of foods are restricted to the patients with thalassemia that ultimately leads to poor nutritional status. This study found that about 40% of patients with thalassemia were severely thin and surprisingly there were no patients with overweight. This revealed that patients with thalassemia are more vulnerable to survive as they cannot eat diversified food because of disease restriction.

Keywords: Nutritional status; Dietary patterns;Thalassemia patients; Bangladesh