MATERNAL NUTRITION AND PREGNANCY OUTCOMES: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

Moral nutrition during pregnancy is a determinant factor of the pregnancy outcome, which has both short-term and long-term implications of not only the maternal and baby health, but also the risk of disease in the future generations. Despite the massive advancement of the specific effects of nutrients, gaps remain in the comparative efficacy of different nutritional interventions, the adherence effect, and the mechanistic aspect of nutrition in terms of how nutrition attains its effects. It is a system review of the correlation between maternal nutrition and pregnancy outcome in the past five years with precise reference to dietary patterns, micronutrient supplementation and biological processes in the same. According to the requirements of the PRISMA 2020, a system search was conducted on PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library of all articles published between January 2019 and December 2024. Search terms were the words which were combination of maternal nutrition, pregnancy diet, micronutrient supplementation, pregnancy outcomes, birth outcomes and gestational outcomes. The criteria used to include the studies included randomised controlled trials, prospective cohort studies and systematic reviews of maternal nutritional status or interventions and their association with defined outcome of pregnancy. The quality assessment tools were Cochrane Risk of Bias tool of randomised trials and Newcastle-Ottawa Scale of observational studies. A total of 2,847 records were identified, 47 studies were selected by including the study, and 28 randomised controlled trials, 12 prospective cohort studies, and 7 meta-analysis systematic reviews were included. It had four important thematic areas, which were; dietary patterns and pregnancy outcomes (n=15 studies); micronutrient supplementation effects (n=18 studies); the placental-mediated mechanisms of nutritional interventions (n=8 studies); and the role of adherence and timing in intervention effectiveness (n=6 studies). Compliance on Mediterranean and DASH diets was associated with reduced risk of gestational diabetes mellitus (OR 0.60, 95% CI 0.450.80), and excessive gestational weight gain. Multifunctional micronutrient supplementation (as compared to iron-folic acid alone) improved birth weight (mean difference 56 g) and also reduced the risk of low birth weight, small-gestationally-age and stunting at six months of age. It is increasingly being evidenced that nutritional interventions do play a role in influencing placental development and placental functions and that placental adaptations are associated with improved maternal and offspring outcomes. The direct provision of nutrients and placental reactions indirectly play the role of determining the outcome of pregnancy and are dependent on the nutritional status of motherhood and diet intake. Early intervention, high compliance and combination of dieting patterns with the rightful supplementation are most likely to produce the best results. The individualised nutrition strategies, effects intergeneration, and effective methods to optimize maternal nutrition throughout the world are the areas that should be taken into consideration in the future research.