Ferritin and iron studies
Reads: Iron status
You want it adequate, not high: low stores are a documented cause of fatigue in some people and demonstrably not in others — see the conditional before supplementing.
What this marker reads
Iron status — body iron stores, read as ferritin, which carry oxygen and run the enzymes that make cellular energy.
What a named body publishes
Each line below is the sentence the issuing body wrote, carried with its own identifier. Nothing here interprets your result — it states what was published, for whom, and by whom.
Ferritin
“WHO: in apparently healthy adults aged 20-59 years, a serum or plasma ferritin concentration below 15 µg/L indicates iron deficiency.” 20-59
WHO guideline on use of ferritin concentrations to assess iron status in individuals and populations · World Health Organization, Geneva, 2020 — hosted on NCBI Bookshelf The document
“WHO: in apparently healthy older persons aged 60 years and above, a ferritin concentration below 15 µg/L indicates iron deficiency.” 60+
WHO guideline on use of ferritin concentrations to assess iron status in individuals and populations · World Health Organization, Geneva, 2020 — hosted on NCBI Bookshelf The document
“WHO Recommendation 1.3: in apparently healthy individuals, risk of iron overload is indicated by a ferritin concentration 'exceeding 150 µg/L in menstruating women'.” females, 20-59
WHO guideline on use of ferritin concentrations to assess iron status in individuals and populations · World Health Organization, Geneva, 2020 — hosted on NCBI Bookshelf The document
“WHO Recommendation 1.3: in apparently healthy individuals, risk of iron overload is indicated by a ferritin concentration exceeding '200 µg/L in men and non-menstruating women'.” males, 20-59
WHO guideline on use of ferritin concentrations to assess iron status in individuals and populations · World Health Organization, Geneva, 2020 — hosted on NCBI Bookshelf The document
“WHO: the same iron-overload-risk threshold of above 150 µg/L is listed for females in the older-persons (60+) stratum.” females, 60+
WHO guideline on use of ferritin concentrations to assess iron status in individuals and populations · World Health Organization, Geneva, 2020 — hosted on NCBI Bookshelf The document
“WHO: the same iron-overload-risk threshold of above 200 µg/L is listed for males in the older-persons (60+) stratum.” males, 60+
WHO guideline on use of ferritin concentrations to assess iron status in individuals and populations · World Health Organization, Geneva, 2020 — hosted on NCBI Bookshelf The document
“WHO: for pregnant women the guideline gives a ferritin threshold of below 15 µg/L in the FIRST TRIMESTER to indicate iron deficiency; it gives no threshold for the second or third trimester.” females, pregnancy, first trimester
WHO guideline on use of ferritin concentrations to assess iron status in individuals and populations · World Health Organization, Geneva, 2020 — hosted on NCBI Bookshelf The document
“WHO Recommendation 1.2: in the presence of infection or inflammation, 'a ferritin concentration below 30 µg/L in children and 70 µg/L in adults may be used to indicate iron deficiency.'” applies when infection or inflammation is present
WHO guideline on use of ferritin concentrations to assess iron status in individuals and populations · World Health Organization, Geneva, 2020 — hosted on NCBI Bookshelf The document
“WHO: the same inflammation-adjusted adult threshold of below 70 µg/L applies to older persons aged 60 years and above.” applies when infection or inflammation is present
WHO guideline on use of ferritin concentrations to assess iron status in individuals and populations · World Health Organization, Geneva, 2020 — hosted on NCBI Bookshelf The document
“WHO: in NON-HEALTHY adults a ferritin concentration above 500 µg/L may indicate risk of iron overload or other disease and calls for further clinical and laboratory evaluation (conditional recommendation, very low certainty of evidence).” stated for adults who are not apparently healthy
WHO guideline on use of ferritin concentrations to assess iron status in individuals and populations · World Health Organization, Geneva, 2020 — hosted on NCBI Bookshelf The document
Your laboratory reads your result against its own assay, and this page does not do that for it. What is above is what a named body published and for whom; the machinery this marker reads is set out on its pathway page, and the formulas witnessed on it are below.
The machinery behind it
What raises this marker and what it goes on to move — each edge carried with its own study — is set out in full on its pathway page: Iron status →
Formulas that modulate it
Each formula page names this pathway and carries the study behind its claim.
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