The study, the first to systematically examine the impact of iron supplementation on cognitive functioning in women aged 18 to 35 (average age 21), was presented at Experimental Biology 2004, in the American Society of Nutritional Sciences' scientific program. Dr. Laura Murray-Kolb, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. John Beard, says the study shows that even modest levels of iron deficiency have a negative impact on cognitive functioning in young women. She says the study also is the first to demonstrate how iron supplementation can reverse this impact in this age group.

Baseline cognition testing, looking at memory, stimulus encoding, retrieval, and other measures of cognition, was performed on 149 women who classified as either iron sufficient, iron deficient but not anemic, or anemic. All of the women underwent a health history, and the research design controlled or took into account any differences in smoking, social status, grade point average, and other measures. The women were then given either 60 mg. iron supplementation (elemental iron) or placebo treatment for four months. At the end of that period, the 113 women remaining in the study took the same task again.

On the baseline test, women who were iron deficient but not anemic completed the tasks in the same amount of time as iron sufficient women of the same age, but they performed significantly worse. Women who were anemia also performed significantly worse, but in addition they took longer. The more anemic a woman was, the longer it took her to complete the tasks. However, supplementation and the subsequent increase in iron stores markedly improved cognition scores (memory,
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Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
19-Apr-2004