• Oliver Schröder, Oliver Mickisch, Ursula Seidler, Andreas de Weerth, Axel U Dignass, Hans Herfarth, Max Reinshagen, Stefan Schreiber, Ulrich Junge, Marc Schrott, and Jürgen Stein.
• First Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, ZAFES, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany.
• Am. J. Gastroenterol. 2005 Nov 1; 100 (11): 2503-9.

ObjectivesAnemia is a frequent complication in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The optimal route for iron supplementation to replenish iron stores has not been determined so far. We therefore evaluated the efficacy and safety of intravenous iron sucrose as compared with oral iron sulfate for the treatment of iron deficiency anemia (IDA) in patients with IBD.MethodsA randomized, prospective, open-label, multicenter study was performed in 46 patients with anemia and transferrin saturation ResultsWhile a comparable increase in hemoglobin was observed for both administration routes (median increase 0.25 g/L in the intravenous group vs 0.21 g/L in the oral group), only iron sucrose led to a rise in serum ferritin concentrations. Intractable gastrointestinal adverse events caused permanent study drug discontinuation in five patients (20.8%) receiving iron sulfate, whereas only one patient (4.5%) had to be withdrawn because of side effects due to iron sucrose.ConclusionsAlthough being equal in short-term efficacy and overall tolerability our results suggest a better gastrointestinal tolerability for iron sucrose. Larger trials are mandatory to prove a possible advantage of iron sucrose in short- and long-term efficacy as well as in tolerability over iron sulfate in the management of IDA in IBD.

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