• Acta Medica Port · Sep 2018

    Comparative Study

    Iron Deficiency and Obesity - Are we Diagnosing with Appropriate Indicators?

    • Ana Margarida Monteiro, Vera Fernandes, Cláudia Matta-Coelho, Sílvia Paredes, Maria Lopes Pereira, Olinda Marques, and Marta Alves.
    • Departamento de Endocrinologia. Hospital de Braga. Braga, Portugal.
    • Acta Medica Port. 2018 Sep 28; 31 (9): 478-482.

    IntroductionWe aim to define the iron deficiency prevalence and eventual differences between obese patients with and without metabolic syndrome.Material And MethodsAnalysis of patients evaluated at multidisciplinary consultation of obesity in our institution between 2013 and 2015 (n = 260). Iron deficiency: ferritin levels < 15 ng/mL.Exclusion Criteriaprior bariatric surgery; lack of ferritin or hemoglobin determinations.ResultsWe analyzed data from 215 patients (84.2% female) with a mean age of 42.0 ± 10.3 years. The median body mass index was 42.5 (40.0 - 46.8) kg/m2 and 52.1% had metabolic syndrome. Iron deficiency was present in 7.0%, with no differences between genders or between patients with or without metabolic syndrome. Hypertension was associated with lower prevalence of iron deficiency. Type 2 diabetes and hypertension patients had higher levels of ferritin. The multivariate analysis showed that metabolic syndrome and increasing body mass index were predictive of higher risk of iron deficiency while hypertension predicted lower odds of iron deficiency.DiscussionThe prevalence of iron deficiency was similar in other published studies. Iron deficiency may be underdiagnosed if based only on ferritin concentrations. In our study, diabetes and hypertension appear to contribute to the increase in ferritin levels described in obesity.ConclusionFerritin may not be a reliable index for evaluating iron stores in obese patients, particularly when associated with comorbidities such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Further studies are needed to guide the diagnosis and iron supplementation in these patients.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…