Reliability of serum assays of iron status in postmenopausal women.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of the study is to determine the reliability during a 2-year period of several newly developed iron-related assays to assess their potential for use in prospective epidemiologic studies.


METHODS
We assessed the temporal reliability of several iron-related assays by using three serum samples collected at yearly intervals from 50 postmenopausal participants in a large prospective study.


RESULTS
We observed high reliability coefficients for ferritin (0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.67-0.86), soluble transferrin receptor (sTfR; 0.79; 95% CI, 0.69-0.87), sTfR/ferritin ratio (0.74; 95% CI, 0.62-0.83), and hepcidin (0.89; 95% CI, 0.84-0.94). In a subset of 30 women, lower reliability was observed for serum iron (0.50; 95% CI, 0.29-0.70), unsaturated iron-binding capacity (0.55; 95% CI, 0.34-0.73), total iron-binding capacity (0.60; 95% CI, 0.40-0.76), and serum transferrin saturation rate (0.44; 95% CI, 0.22-0.65). The reliability of anti-5-hydroxymethyl-2'-deoxyuridine autoantibody titers, a biomarker of oxidized DNA damage, one of the mechanisms by which iron is thought to impact disease risk, was very high (0.97, 95% CI, 0.5-0.99).


CONCLUSIONS
Our results show that some newly developed iron-related assays could be useful tools to assess iron-disease associations in prospective cohorts that collect a single blood sample.
Zeleniuch-Jacquotte
Anne
A
Department of Environmental Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
Zhang
Qi
Q
Dai
Jisen
J
Shore
Roy E
RE
Arslan
Alan A
AA
Koenig
Karen L
KL
Karkoszka
Jerzy
J
Afanasyeva
Yelena
Y
Frenkel
Krystyna
K
Toniolo
Paolo
P
Huang
Xi
X
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001323:Autoantibodies / Q000097:blood; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000097:blood*; D001774:Blood Chemical Analysis / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D003856:Deoxyuracil Nucleotides / Q000097:blood; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; D005260:Female; D005293:Ferritins / Q000032:analysis / Q000097:blood*; D006801:Humans; D007501:Iron / Q000097:blood*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009519:New York City; D017698:Postmenopause / Q000097:blood*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014168:Transferrin / Q000032:analysis
D001323:Autoantibodies; D015415:Biomarkers; D003856:Deoxyuracil Nucleotides; D014168:Transferrin; C025110:hydroxymethyldeoxyuridine triphosphate; D005293:Ferritins; D007501:Iron