For participants

Anaemia happens when red cells are reduced in a person’s blood. It can develop during pregnancy and is most commonly because of a lack of iron.

At present, we do not have a good understanding of all health problems caused by anaemia in pregnancy, but some studies suggest that as well as tiredness, anaemia is linked to maternal bleeding and babies being born early.

Anaemia can also be challenging for healthcare professionals to diagnose and treat.

Currently, we treat women with iron tablets (which can help increase iron levels in the blood) if they develop anaemia during pregnancy.

There is also some evidence that giving iron tablets to women before they develop anaemia can help the health of mother and baby (i.e. prevention of anaemia rather than treatment once it has happened).

We do not fully understand which health problems are helped and so need to find out more about this. To explore this, we will need to run a large study.

In large studies like this it is important that tablets given to people taking part are taken exactly as recommended. This helps us to understand our findings better. For example, if we find that the tablets do not help the health of women and their babies, we will know it is because the tablets do not work that way rather than because the tablets are not being taken as recommended.

So, women who take part in this study and are given iron tablets will need to first decide and agree to take them.  These tablets then need to be taken consistently i.e. as prescribed.

Evidence shows us that there are a number of challenges to taking medicines (like iron tablets) as prescribed, both during pregnancy and more generally. These include experiencing side effects, family member opinions about medicines or simply forgetting to take them.