Serum Iron and Iron-Binding Capacity in Adolescents

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Abstract
A comparison of obese and nonobese adolescents with respect to certain variables of blood chemistry connected with iron transport gave the following results: (1) Male and female obese adolescents are significantly different from their nonobese counterparts in serum iron concentration, unsaturated iron-binding capacity and percentage saturation of plasma transferrin. The obese subjects have considerably lower mean serum iron values, substantially higher unsaturated iron-binding capacities and decidedly lower percentage saturation than the nonobese subjects. The obese adolescents have slightly higher total iron-binding capacities and somewhat lower hemoglobin and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentrations, but these latter differences were not statistically significant in this study. (2) Compared to the nonobese, the obese subjects of both sexes are characterized by a greater percentage of persons with the combination of “low” serum iron concentration and “elevated” unsaturated iron-binding capacity, a syndrome usually associated with iron deficiency. (3) The obese adolescents are consistently different from the nonobese in the strength of the intercorrelation of the variables analyzed, after allowances are made for the effects of age, height and weight. In both sexes, a tendency toward more marked relationships between these variables was observed in the obese than in the nonobese subjects. The possibility of a significant tendency for obese adolescents to manifest phases of latent iron deficiency anemia is discussed. Conceivable influences responsible for the deviant iron transport values in the obese subjects are explored.