Investigating Anemia Levels in Women

INFO 2950 Final Project

Author

Brilliant Pikachu
Samantha Reim, Jenny Yu, Mary Zhang, Sally Park, Lina Liu

Published

May 5, 2023

Introduction to Anemia

  • Anemia is a blood condition that happens when the blood produces too few healthy red blood cells. 

  • Anemia is the most common blood condition worldwide.

  • Anemia is 10 times more common in women than men, and even more common in women of menstruating age.

  • Causes of anemia include: Iron deficiency, vitamin B12 deficiency, various autoimmune diseases, and more.

  • Symptoms: Fatigue, weakness, shortness of breath, irregular heart beats, dizziness, cold hands and feet, and more.

The Data Set

  • Dataset source: World Health Organization

  • Includes: Country, year the data was collected, sex, pregnancy status, sample size, mean hemoglobin level

  • The dataset grouped sex by either women, or men and women. We filtered our data to focus on anemia in women.

  • We created a new variable to denote whether a country is a developing country or not.

  • An additional column for country classification (developed/ developing) was added by creating a vector for developing countries as declared by the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Data Analysis part 1

Normal hemoglobin levels for women are 121 g/L to 151 g/L

  1. Do women in Developing and Developed Countries have different levels of mean hemoglobin?

  • Mean for developed countries = 126.5313 g/L

  • Mean for developing countries = 114.7329 g/L

Data Analysis part 2

Normal hemoglobin levels for women are 121 g/L to 151 g/L

  1. Do pregnant women and non-pregnant women have different levels of mean hemoglobin?

  • Mean for non-pregnant women = 125.6261 g/L

  • Mean for pregnant women = 113.5894 g/L

Graphs and Visualizations

 

 

Developing vs. Developed Countries

Hypothesis Test:

\[ H_0 = \mu_{Develeoped} = \mu_{Developing} \]

\[ H_A = \mu_{Develeoped} \neq \mu_{Developing} \]

p-value = 0.00

  • The mean values for developed and developing countries are not equal, there is a significant difference between the two at the alpha = .05 level.

  • Possible causes for this could be inadequate diet, decreased knowledge of the condition, and more.

Pregnant vs. Non-pregnant

Hypothesis Test

\[ H_0 = \mu_{pregnant} = \mu_{non-pregnant} \]

\[ H_A = \mu_{pregnant} \neq \mu_{non-pregnant} \]

p-value = 0.00

  • The mean values for pregnant and non-pregnant women are not equal, there is a significant difference between the two at the alpha = .05 level.

  • The volume of blood increases in the body, and iron and vitamins are needed to make more red blood cells.

Conclusions + Future Work

  • There is a significant difference between the mean hemoglobin levels in developing and developed countries.

  • There is a significant difference between the mean hemoglobin levels in pregnant and non-pregnant women.

  • Explore underlying factors contributing to observed differences of our analyses.

  • Find data that includes hemoglobin levels before and after various treatment plans followed by the patient. Analyze effectiveness by seeing the change in hemoglobin levels.

  • Expand data to analyze hemoglobin levels in men.

Questions?