Iron Stores in Normal Men and Male Blood Donors

Abstract

Iron stores available for hemoglobin synthesis have been determined in 11 male healthy volunteers and in 14 male blood donor volunteers by means of quantitative phlebotomy. The mobilizable iron stores in normal men averaged 750 mg with a range of 180–1 350 mg. The blood donors had significantly lower values with a mean of 110 mg and a range of 0–250 mg. The desferrioxamine (DF)‐induced urinary iron excretion was found to be closely related to the available iron stores. The DF test could separate groups with different size of the iron stores. In subjects with iron deficiency and anemia the DF‐induced urinary iron excretion was significantly lower than that of a group with depleted iron stores but no anemia. This indicates that DF derives a fraction of its iron from other sources than the iron stores. During reduction of the iron stores by phlebotomy there was a successive decrease in the urinary iron excretion induced by DF in most subjects studied. A diminution of the mean cell volume and Hb content of the red cells did not occur until the iron stores were almost depleted.

Absorption and Side‐Effects after Peroral Administration of Sustained Release Iron Tablets

“…Significantly higher maximum serum iron concentrations were observed in the iron deficient anaemic patients in study I (52.8 pmol/l) than in healthy blood donors (study 11) with normal Hb (3 I .9 pmolll). These observations are in accordance with previous reports (4, 16,21).…”

Availability of Iron Dextran for Hemoglobin Synthesis

“…The subnormal serum iron values 1 4 months following iron dextran infusion were probably also reflections of this retarded iron release and are in agreement with previous observations of Marchasin and Wallerstein (25), Wood et al (38) and Henderson and Hillman (20). The availability of iron dextran stores for D F chelation was also slightly reduced during this period as compared to natural iron stores of corresponding size (28). This is in agreement with the findings of Hedenberg (19).…”

“…The deposits had the same appearance of small, equal-sized granules in RE cells as described after iron dextrin (29) and sacharated iron oxide (3,18). Thus, there is a difference between these artificial iron stores and normal ones, which are completely available in response to serial phlebotomies of this kind (24,27,28). Richter (32) found that it is not possible to distinguish injected iron dextran from endogenous hemosiderin by routine histochemical methods.…”

“…This high value was not due to a spontaneous iron excretion due to the iron dextran infusion, since in subjects not given D F the maximal urinary iron excretion following iron dextran did not exceed 0.3 mg/24 11. The elevated D F value is approximately twice as high as that of normals with iron stores of a corresponding size (28).…”

Studies on Iron Stores Built up by an Iron‐poly (sorbitol‐gluconic acid) complex, Ferastral®, in Man

“…Previous studies have demonstrated a close correlation between the chelatability of storage iron by desferrioxamine (DF), the availability of such stores for Hb-synthesis, and a close relationship between the amount of storage iron and DF-induced excretion (Balcerzak et al 1968, Olsson 1972 . I t has also been shown that iron stores created therapeutically by parenteral iron complexes such as iron-dextrin and irondextran differ from natural storage iron in that they are incompletely chelatable by DF and are less easily utilized for hemoglobin synthesis (Olsson 1969, Olsson et al 1972 a, b, Henderson & Hillman 1969, Olsson & Weinfeld 1972. This incomplete availability of parenteral iron complexes has been said to be a consequence of altered distribution and/ or characteristics of the material.…”