Neutron activation analysis of anemic children’s hair

Abstract

The objective of the present work is to use instrument neutron-activation analysis to study the trace-element composition of the hair of children living in the densely populated Chilanzar district of Tashkent and listed in the clinical register as suffering from iron-deficiency anemia. The objects of investigation were hair samples obtained from four groups of children -31 boys and 24 girls ranging in age from 10 to 176 months: 1 -cured (10 children) and 2, 3, 4 (28, 11, 6 children) -low, medium, and high severity of illness. For analysis, a strand of hair 2-4 cm long from the root was taken from four or five locations on the back of the head, carefully washed in acetone, dried, weighed, packed in marked polyethylene packages, and analyzed using the procedure of [1].The source of neutrons with flux density 6·10 13 sec -1 ·cm -2 was the VVR-SM reactor at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The irradiation and cool-down times, depending on the half-life, for nuclide with short (T 1/2 < 10 min), medium (10 min < T 1/2 < 1 day), and long lives (1 day < T 1/2 < 1 yr) were 15 sec and 10 min, 15 h and 10 days, and 15 h and 30 days, respectively. The induced activity of the samples was measured with a gamma spectrometer equipped with a germanium detector with sensitive volume 120 cm 3 and energy resolution 1.8 keV on the 60 Co 1330 keV γ-line. The GENIE 2000 program was used to process the data.The measurement error for the main elements does not exceed 12%. The detection limit for most elements is much lower than the measured content. Cadmium and iodine were found in a limited number of samples.As Table 1 shows, the distribution range of the content of all elements is wide and is independent of the severity of the iron-deficient anemia and the age of the patients. The difference between the maximum and minimum concentrations of some elements is a factor of 2-3. The data in Table 1 were compared with the data obtained by other authors [2-5] ( Table 2). The data obtained by these authors also confirm the large difference of the trace-element concentrations in human hair. For example, the difference between the minimum and maximum concentrations of individual elements reaches a factor of 20 [3]. Apparently, such differences can be even larger in children's hair, since juveniles characteristically experience intense growth and therefore rapid metabolism. The data obtained by the authors of the present article match the data in the works mentioned above to within the distribution range of the concentrations of Cr, Mn, Zn, Se, Br, Rb, Ag, and Sb.Investigations of iron-deficiency anemia show that the variation of the concentration of individual chemical elements as functions of the severity of the illness in children exhibits regularities. Thus, it was found that the content of Fe, Mn, Sc, Co, K, Ca, Se, Rb, Sb, La, and Au content in children's hair increases in children with a greater severity of iron-deficiency anemia while the concentration of Cu, Zn, As, and U decrease...