What is it about?
The paper is about correcting serum concentrations of retinol (vitamin A) and ferritin in people living in the community and not having any obvious disease. The adjustment factors are not to be used on people who are obviously sick or in hospital. People in the community may have recently recovered from infection or have just been infected but are not yet showing any clinical symptoms. Nevertheless studies have shown that such people will have depressed serum retinol and elevated ferritin concentrations. Using such data without correction will overestimate vitamin A deficiency and underestimate iron deficiency.
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Why is it important?
Correcting for covert inflammation will give a better estimate of vitamin A or iron deficiencies. Where intervention studies are done, inflammation at the start and end may differ so correcting for inflammation gives a better estimate of the effectiveness of the intervention.
Perspectives
Poor environmental conditions and diets in many developing countries means that the prevalence of infections is high. Infection causes inflammation. If the person is sick the investigator knows that inflammation is present but covert inflammation will also be present in such communities. Unless covert inflammation is measured there is no way of knowing the magnitude of its effects on nutritional status.
Professor David I Thurnham
University of Ulster
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Use of Adjustment Factors to Address the Impact of Inflammation on Vitamin A and Iron Status in Humans1–3, Journal of Nutrition, April 2015, Oxford University Press (OUP),
DOI: 10.3945/jn.114.194712.
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