Carnitine Serum Levels in Children with Iron Deficiency Anemia

Objective: To evaluate carnitine serum levels as a co-morbidity in children with iron deficiency anemia. Patients and Methods: Fifty four well nourished children (29 boys and 25 girls) with iron deficiency anemia were enrolled. Twenty five healthy non-anemic age- and sex-matched children were included as a control group. For all anemic children and controls, we performed complete blood cell count, serum ferritin, serum iron, and total iron binding capacity. Carnitine levels were measured by spectrophotometric method. Results: Serum carnitine levels were significantly lower in children with iron deficiency anemia than in the controls (p 0.001). There were strongly significant positive correlations between serum carnitine and hemoglobin, serum iron, and serum ferritin (p 0.001 for all). Conclusions: Low serum levels of carnitine in those children may be due to iron deficiency. Therefore, iron fortification of diet of children seems to be essential not only to prevent anemia but also to avoid possible effects of iron deficiency in growing children such as secondary carnitine deficiency.