Skripsi

The correlation between cognitive functional and iron intake of the undernourished school children age 7 to 9 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Asia is the region having the highest number of childhood malnutrition with 70% of the total world's malnourished children. Among all that, iron deficiency is the most common micronutrient deficiency of whom 1/3 of them having iron deficiency anemia. Iron deficiency causes disturbances in synthesis, packaging, uptake and degradation of neurotransmitters in the body. The food intakes of the participants were taken and they had to undergo coding tests, forwards and backward digital span tests and visual search test to evaluate the cognitive function. This study is a descriptive cross-sectional study done in 209 undernourished school children age 7 to 9 in five schools in eastern Jakarta. The secondary data was collected on March 2009. It was found that the participants had a very low iron intake 4.6mg (3.0mg - 6.7mg), and the cognitive function is not normally distributed. No correlation between cognitive function and iron intake was found. In conclusion, the cognitive function did not correlate with the iron intake of the children.
Keywords: Iron deficiency, anemia, cognitive function, cognition, children.