Malabsorption of iron in children with iron deficiency.

Inability to absorb oral iron is believed to be an extremely rare cause of therapeutic failure in the treatment of iron deficiency anemia. Six patients who had failed to respond to oral iron therapy were studied by a simple oral absorption test and contrasted with 25 patients with untreated iron deficiency anemia and 10 normal subjects. All six of the patients who were therapeutic failures demonstrated impaired iron absorption in the absence of other clinical evidence of gastrointestinal disease. In the 25 newly diagnosed patients with iron deficiency. 24 demonstrated elevated iron absorptions while 10 ironreplete normal subjects had minimal elevations in their serum iron values following the administration of the test dose of 1 mg of elemental iron per kilogram. When the therapeutic failures were treated with parenteral iron, all had a therapeutic response. In addition, after treatment the impaired absorption of iron improved transiently. All children who absorbed iron readily responded to oral iron therapy.