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Acta Pizdiatr Scand 79: 467, 1990 ng/ml. 120-.c 100-2 80-c .-T I 0 0 602 P 8 40-20 - LETTER TO T H E EDITOR Maternal Ferritin Values and Foetal Iron Stores Sir,The investigation of Bhargava and co-authors (1) gives new insight in an old issue by raising the question if even normal ferritin values at birth automatically mean that the children have sufficient iron stores after the prenatal iron accumulation.We conducted a similar study in Wad MedadSudan looking at the haemoglobin, haematocrit, iron, ferritin and transferrin saturation, as well as at acute phase proteins (C-rzactive protein, coeruloplasmin, alpha-2-globulin, and immunoglobulin M) in venous blood of women just after delivery and in cord blood of their offspring.By analysing the results we were not able to detect any correlation between maternal and cord-blood haemoglobin, between maternal haemoglobin and cordblood ferritin or cord-blood transferrin saturation.The same was found by comparing groups defined by a maternal haemoglobin above and below 11 g/dl. However by forming groups referring to a maternal plasma-ferritin above and below 12 ng/ml we found different values for cord-blood ferritin (Fig. 1); this was further confirmed by using a maternal transferrin-saturation of 16% for grouping the data (Fig. 2).It seems remarkable that in all groups of anemic mothers the cord-blood ferritin median and SEM are well above the critical value of 30 ng/ml. The cord-blood ferritin levels in Wad Medani are higher than the values found by Bhargava et al.Although these values are normal in our study, we conclude that in developing countries children of mothers suffering from iron-deficiency have less iron and are at greater risk to develop early iron deficiency as children of mothers with normal ferritin and transferrin-saturations.

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