Antianemic medicament Ascofer ® and ferrous gluconate, its basic iron bearing ingredient, were studied with the use of Mössbauer spectroscopy. Room temperature spectra gave a clear evidence that two phases of iron were present viz. ferrous (Fe 2+ ) as a major one with a contribution of ~85 ±5 %, and ferric (Fe 3+ ) whose contribution was found to be ∼15±5 %. However, the actual values of the contributions of the two kind of the iron ions in Ascofer ® depend on sample's age: the abundance of Fe 2+ ions increases with time by ∼10% after 51 months, while that of Fe 3+ decreases by the same amount. This means that an internal reduction of Fe 3+ ions takes place. Ferrous ions were shown to occupy at least two different sites. In Ascofer ® , the relative abundance of the two sites does not depend on the age of sample, while in the gluconate the population of site 1 increases and that of site 2 decreases with the age of the sample.

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