Preparatory work for the update of the tolerable upper intake levels for iron

Abstract

The present document has been produced and adopted by the bodies identified above as authors. This task has been carried out exclusively by the authors in the context of a contract between the European Food Safety Authority and the authors, awarded following a tender procedure. The present document is published complying with the transparency principle to which the Authority is subject. It may not be considered as an output adopted by the Authority. The European Food Safety Authority reserves its rights, view and position as regards the issues addressed and the conclusions reached in the present document, without prejudice to the rights of the authors.

Scientific opinion on the tolerable upper intake level for iron

“…Preparatory work regarding subquestions sQ1 to sQ6 was performed by a contractor. 3 The technical report of the contractor is published (Parlesak et al., 2024 ). The technical report served as the primary source of information for this assessment.…”

“…These steps were conducted by a contractor and were undertaken by the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with the University of Oslo and the Karolinska Institutet. A detailed description of the steps is published in the final report of this outsourcing project (Parlesak et al., 2024 ).…”

“…The search strategy was created by information specialists of the University of Oslo and peer reviewed by information specialists at the Karolinska Institutet and EFSA. It is further detailed in the final report of the outsourcing project (Parlesak et al., 2024 ). Grey literature (i.e.…”

“…After protocol amendment 3 and further exclusion at data extraction, 93 articles remained for assessment. A total number of 33 articles were used by the contractor (Parlesak et al., 2024 ) for answering sQ2b (relationship between SF concentrations and total iron intakes). As the Panel decided not to pursue this question (see Section 3.3 ), these articles were not used in the present opinion.…”

“…For sQ3a (adverse GI effects), a total of 62 articles met the inclusion criteria. Of those, 58 are described in the contractor's report (Parlesak et al., 2024 ). As described in Section 3.5.4 , a further subselection of the articles was made by the Panel during the assessment and six articles out of the 62 articles retrieved were used by the Panel.…”