Efficacy of intravenous iron in treating iron deficiency anaemia in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Are there predictors of response?

INTRODUCTION

In inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) is a very common disorder. Until recently,oral iron has been the mainstay therapy, nevertheless it has been associated with intolerance and noncompliance. Therefore, the goal of our study was to evaluate the efficacy of intravenous iron in IDA in IBD patients and the secondary aim was to investigate whether other potencial factors could influence in the response to the treatment.

DESIGN

An open-label, prospective, consecutive, single centre study.

MATERIAL AND

METHODS

We performed our study in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) or Crohn´s disease (CD) with severe anaemia or intolerance with oral iron. All of them received intravenous sacarose iron and did biochemistry profile with hemoglobin (Hb). Moreover, the correlation with other variables was studied: age,sex, smoking habit, IBD type, previous surgery and type of surgery and other treatments. Response was defined as Hb increase of ≥ 2 g/dL or normalization of the levels.

RESULTS

Fifty-four patients were included into the study, 34(63%) with UC y 20 (37%) with CD, 18 (33.3%) men and 36 wo-men (66.6%) and the average was 48 +/- 14 years. The total proportion of responders was 52% (SD +/- 05); 43% of the patients reached Hb ≥ 2 g/dl and y 9% of them normalized Hb. Only the utilization of 5-ASA was associated with low response to iron treatment (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Our study suggests that response to intravenous iron is achievable in the majority of patients with IBD and severe IDA or intolerance treatment with oral iron. Moreover, the patients with consumption of 5-ASA could had less response to the treatment.