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This review analysed data form six trials (involving 411 women) which evaluated treatments (intravenous or subcutaneous erythropoietin versus intravenous or oral iron) for postpartum iron-deficiency anaemia. Each of the six trials had fewer than 100 participants. No randomized control trials were identified that assessed treatment with blood transfusion or oral iron supplementation alone (the most common treatment for this type of anaemia).

Only two of the 22 outcomes (related to clinical maternal and neonatal factors) proposed by the reviewers could be analysed because the included trials focused largely on haematological indices that were not prespecified in the review protocol as outcome measures of relevance. The only outcome that showed a statistically significant effect in favour of one intervention (erythropoietin plus iron) was lactation at discharge. The effects of erythropoietin on blood indices were unclear since one trial could not demonstrate an increase in such indices when compared with placebo.

Subgroup analysis could not be performed due to the small number of women in the groups studied, and also because of lack of data (severity of anaemia at trial entry, for example).

Electronic searches of the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Current Contents and ACP journal club were used to identify and retrieve the trials. Thus, the likelihood of missing relevant trials is low. All trials were scored for their quality, and treatment results were calculated using relative risk estimates (RR) and weighted mean differences (WMD). The data are clearly tabulated and graphically depicted for different treatments taking into consideration the outcomes evaluated.

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