ABSTRACT
The absorption of a commercial brand of small-particle reduced iron was evaluated in 10 normal subjects. For each subject, the hemoglobin incorporation method was used to measure the true absorption of 60 mg of iron from either ferrous sulfate or ferric ammonium citrate. The iron tolerance test (ITT) was also studied for these two compounds and for reduced iron. This procedure consisted of measuring the area under the curve of plasma iron elevations at specified times for 6 hours, or the peak plasma iron, corrected by the plasma iron disappearance rate obtained from measuring plasma iron at specified times for 4 hours after the slow intravenous injection of 0.4 mg of iron as ferric citrate. Only the ITT was used to measure the absorption of 60 mg of reduced iron. Reference dose iron ascorbate absorption was measured in each subject. The absorption of ferric ammonium citrate and reduced iron was expressed as percent of dose and also as absorption percent of that of ferrous sulfate. Mean geometric "true absorptions" were 39.0 for reference dose, 10.4 for FeSO4 and 2.4 for ferric ammonium citrate. The later was 23 that of FeSO4. By ITT the mean geometric absorptions were 7.9, 3.7 and 3.2 for FeSO4, ferric ammonium citrate and reduced iron respectively, or 47 and 41 of that of FeSO4. We propose that the true absorption of the commercial brand of reduced iron tested was 20 that of FeSO4 based on the relation between the ITT results of reduced iron and the ITT and true absorption values of ferric ammonium citrate in relation to FeSO4. The use of this method for measuring absorption of unlabeled iron compounds is discussed.