title: Is It Possible to Predict the Iron Status from an Infant's Diet History?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Iron deficiency remains a very common nutritional problem despite the improvement in nutrition and increased understanding of methods for its prevention. Thus, we try to create a new method for screening iron nutrition through infant nutrition history.
  
  
  METHODS
  Among the children who visited Inha University Hospital from March 2006 to July 2012, 181 children with iron deficiency anemia (IDA) and 52 children without IDA ranging from 6 to 36 months of age were reviewed in this study. We used the age when they began to wean food, the type of sort weaning foods, the time required for successful weaning, iron content in weaning foods, and the duration of breastfeeding for scoring infant nutrition history based on a questionnaire.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The mean score of the IDA group was 7.8±2.6 points, which was significantly higher than that of the control group (5.6±2.1) (p=0.000). If we set up the cutoff value at 6 points, this screening has 86.8% sensitivity and 36% specificity. In addition, as the IDA score increased, there was a falling trend of hemoglobin.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The IDA score does not have high specificity or high sensitivity. However, this study conveys that those patients who record a high score have low hemoglobin. Therefore, we suggest this score system for screening more IDA patients via nonpainful techniques.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Inha University Hospital, Inha University School of Medicine, Incheon, Korea.
authors.forename: Hyung Jin
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Dong Hyun
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Ji Eun
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Young Se
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Kwon
authors.forename: Yong Hoon
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Jun
authors.forename: Young Jin
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.forename: Soon Ki
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Kim
keywords: Breast feeding; Diet; Iron-deficiency anemia; Nutrition; Weaning