Diagnostic strategies for detecting subclinical iron deficiencies and associated to chronic diseases

Estrategias diagnósticas utilizadas para detectar deficiencias de hierro subclínicas y asociadas a enfermedades crónicas

Due to the homeostasis and the hourly physiological variations in ironís metabolism, quantifying, both circulatingand stored iron, has become a challenge for the experts that try to design highly sensitive and specific tests toquantify not only the levels of circulating and stored iron, but also its effects in erithropoiesis, and the proteins,transporters and receptors involved in the process in order to discard its deficiency. Iron deficiencies gothrough three stages; the first two are the most difficult to identify because they are sub-clinical and becausethey can appear simultaneously with chronic diseases inflammatory infectious, neoplacics which cause ane-mia. In this paper, the principal laboratory tests used to identify iron deficiencies will be reviewed, referring totheir sensibility, specificity, advantages and their used limitations.

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75. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22490/24629448.337