Dietary Iron Intake and Body Iron Status of Myocardial Infarction Patients in Chunan Area

It has been known for some time that elevated body iron could be a risk factor for coronary heart disease. The present study was conducted to determine body iron status and dietary iron intake of patients with myocardial infarction(MI). Seventy five patients from the Chunam area with their first MI history within he past 2 months were recruited. The serum iron concentration, total iron binding capacity(TIBC) and percent transferrin saturation(TS) were selected as indicators of body iron status. Twenty four hour recall was conducted by trained interviewers to asses the dietary intake. Most women (91.3%) showed waist to hip ratio(W/H) greater than 0.85 while 17.3% of men were assessed to have a tendency of abdominal obesity(W/H>0.95). The average BMI of women was 25.80 and that of men was 23.98. The average diet intake of participants was below the recommended dietary allowances (RDA) for most nutrients. He average dietary iron intake was 10.03 mg/day for all subjects while women's iron intake was significantly lower than men's. However, a great proportion of participants (77%) showed a tendency to have normal iron status. About 9% of the participants were assessed as iron deficient and 14% had an iron overload. The mean serum iron concentration was 125 g/dl ranging from 13.3 to 280.6 g/dl. Iron intake from animal sources were significantly associated with body iron status (r=0.257, p=0.026) when TIBC was used as an iron status indicator. When iron status was assessed with TS, it was directly associated with iron intake from animal sources(r=0.278, p=0.05) for he subjects in the normal iron status group. He results of the present study showed that the nutrient intake of Mi patients in Chunan was not quite adequate while iron status was mostly in the normal range. Further studies are needed to investigated whether there is a possible difference in iron metabolism of the MI patients.