This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Women's Health, Other  • Diabetes Mellitus  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: The study by Dr Jiang and colleagues¹ does not address all potential factors related to iron stores in women. First, plasma ferritin levels in women are approximately one half of those in men, primarily because a third "labile pool" of stored iron is present in women.²

Second, although the case and control groups contained equivalent numbers of postmenopausal women, the amounts of iron loss, which can be highly variable in menstruating women, were not studied. Scott and Pritchard³ reported that accurate evaluation of iron stores in healthy college-aged women must include bone marrow examinations for stainable iron.

Third, plasma ferritin levels are a better measure of inflammation than of iron stores. In a study comparing the effects of weekly vs biweekly low-density lipoprotein apheresis on plasma parameters,⁴ we found that both serum iron levels and ferritin levels were reduced and iron-binding capacity (IBC) was increased by weekly . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Daniel McNeel Lane, MD, PhD
dmlmdphd@aol.com
Saving Your Heart LLC
San Antonio, Tex