Anemia–“IRONIC,” isn’t it!

Article Outline

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Iron deficiency anemia continues to be a serious risk to low-income children, although its overall prevalence has fallen in the past two decades. There are still, however, some unanswered questions about the demographics of this risk.

In the current issue of The Journal, Cusick et al from the CDC present the results of a fascinating series of analyses of data from the CDC’s Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System. The size of the cohorts studied in these analyses is impressive, numbering hundreds of thousands of mostly low-income children.

The data were divided into cohorts, representing children who were studied for anemia at about 12, 18, 24, and 36 months, and who had a subsequent examination a year later. The fascinating observation from this study was that in each cohort, most of the children identified as anemic at follow up were not anemic at the time of original measurement; most of the anemia was “incident.” This reinforces the importance of continued anemia surveillance in low-income at risk children, and continued attention to dietary prevention discussions at the time of health maintenance visits.