Lower iron stores were associated with suboptimal gross motor scores in infants at 3–7 months

Abstract

Iron is an essential micronutrient for the developing brain and is needed for myelination and maturation of the brain and for cognitive functions. 1 Iron deficiency in infancy is common in both high-income and low-income countries. The infants depend on sufficient availability of micronutrients to achieve rapid growth and development.Early identification and prevention of iron deficiency is especially important since early iron supplementation has been shown to result in better motor skills at 9 and 12 months of age when compared to non-supplemented infants. [2][3][4] Ferritin levels are widely used as a biomarker of iron stores. 5 Since ferritin exhibits large age-dependent variations during the first 6 months of life, 6 as well as being an acute-phase protein increasing with infection and inflammation, 7 reticulocyte haemoglobin (ret-Hb) is increasingly used in this age group to estimate iron stores.

Nitrous oxide in labour predicted newborn screening total homocysteine and is a potential risk factor for infant vitamin B12 deficiency

“…Details on inclusion, background characteristics, and clinical and biochemical findings have previously been published. 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 We also included DBS controls, matched for date of birth, age in days, sex, hospital, birth weight, and gestational age of the cases and clinical controls. Data on pregnancy, delivery, and clinical follow‐up were not available for the DBS controls.…”

“…As controls, we used a cohort of healthy, age‐matched infants (Figure S1), referred to as clinical controls, since they were recruited for postnatal clinical follow‐up in 2018–2019 from the Postnatal and Neonatal Unit at Vestfold Hospital Trust, Norway. Details on inclusion, background characteristics, and clinical and biochemical findings have previously been published 16–19 . We also included DBS controls, matched for date of birth, age in days, sex, hospital, birth weight, and gestational age of the cases and clinical controls.…”

Issue Highlights

“…The authors suggest that the increased public interest in ferritin measurements may have been driven by social media activity. In another paper in this issue, Ljungblad et al report that lower iron stores were associated with suboptimal gross motor scores in infants at 3–7 months of age 8 …”

A Retrospective Evaluation of the Predictive Value of Newborn Screening for Vitamin B12 Deficiency in Symptomatic Infants Below 1 Year of Age

“…We recruited a cohort of healthy, age-matched infants, referred to as clinical controls, scheduled for postnatal clinical follow-up in 2018-2019 from the Postnatal and Neonatal Unit at Vestfold Hospital Trust, Norway [16]. Details on inclusion, background characteristics, clinical and biochemical findings have been published elsewhere [1,[15][16][17][18]. We also included NBS dried blood spot (DBS) controls, matched for date of birth, age in days, sex, hospital, birth weight and gestational age of the clinical cases and clinical controls, designated as matched NBS DBS controls.…”