A case report of recurrent anencephaly and literature review.

Anencephaly is a rare congenital anomaly in which the forebrain, meninges, vault of the skull, and scalp all fail to form. We report a case of a 32-year-old gravida 2 woman with an anencephalic fetus detected at the 21st gestational week. She had a history of an intrauterine fetal death of an anencephalic fetus at the 20th gestational week two years before. We present the case and briefly review the literature.

The efficacy and tolerability of iron protein succinylate in the treatment of iron-deficiency anemia in pregnancy.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of iron protein succinylate in the treatment of iron-deficiency anemia in pregnancy. One hundred and thirty anemic pregnant women were studied. Inclusion criteria were iron-deficiency type of anemia, and hemoglobin levels below of 11.5, 10.9 and 10.3 g/dl for the three trimesters of pregnancy, respectively. Twenty-five women who presented pregnancy-related complications were excluded during treatment. The remaining 105 were treated with 1600-mg iron protein succinylate per os daily for a period of four months. A group of anemia-related clinical signs and symptoms, and hematological parameters were recorded at the beginning of treatment, as well as two and four months later. They included epidermis and mucosal paleness, skin and nail lesions, glossitis, heart pulse, sickness, anorexia, apathy, ataxia, polypnea, insomnia, nervousness, paresthesias and other neurological symptoms; the hematological parameters included Hgb, hct, RBCs, WBCs, MCV, MCH, MCHC, PLTs, serum Fe and ferritin. Possible side or adverse effects were considered during treatment. The majority of symptoms and signs of anemia were gradually improved. There was a statistically significant increase in the means of Hgb, hct, WBCs, MCV, MCH, PLTs and serum ferritin (p < 0.05). Anemia was effectively treated in 100/105 (95.2%) women, but not in five patients (4.8%) who displayed poor compliance to the therapeutic protocol. There were transient and mild side-effects in seven (6.6%) treated women, namely diarrhea, epigastralgia, vomiting, and nausea, which however, did not necessitate discontinuation of the therapeutic protocol. Iron protein succinylate is an effective and well tolerated treatment of iron-deficiency anemia in pregnancy.