Nearly 1 in 3 Americans May Have Undetected Iron Deficiency

Staff
By Staff
5 Min Read
Almost 1 in 3 American adults may have iron deficiency — including many people who don’t have any typical risk factors for this condition and might not get screened for it, according to a new study.

For the study, researchers examined data on more than 8,000 nationally representative adults. All the participants had blood tests for both absolute iron deficiency (when the body has low iron levels) and functional iron deficiency (when the body has enough iron but can’t use it properly).

Overall, 14 percent of these adults had absolute iron deficiency and another 15 percent had functional iron deficiency, according to study findings published in JAMA Network Open.

“In both conditions, there is not enough iron available to the tissues that need it,” says the senior study author, Leo Buckley, PharmD, MPH, a clinical pharmacy specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Iron Deficiency May Go Undetected

Just 33 percent of the study participants with absolute iron deficiency and 14 percent of the participants with functional iron deficiency had a medical condition that might trigger a screening, the study found. Medical conditions that warrant screening included anemia, heart failure, chronic kidney disease, or a current pregnancy, according to the study.

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