Trial reportThe journal of nutrition, health & aging2022
Iron Deficiency and Incident Infections among Community-Dwelling Adults Age 70 Years and Older: Results from the DO-HEALTH Study.
Trial report in The journal of nutrition, health & aging, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 3 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evaluation of neutrophil oxidative burst capacity in relation to major adverse cardiac events and infection in patients with cardiovascular disease.Clinical research in cardiology : official journal of the German Cardiac Society · 2026Article
- Targeting Inflammation and Iron Deficiency in Heart Failure: A Focus on Older Adults.Biomedicines · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 20 institutions in 9 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo assess if baseline iron deficiency, with or without anemia, is associated with incident infections over 3 years among community-dwelling older adults.
designProspective secondary analysis of DO-HEALTH, a 3-year randomized, double-blind controlled trial. SETTING AND
participants2157 community-dwelling adults age 70+ from 5 European countries with good cognitive function and mobility and no major health events in the 5 years prior to enrollment Measurements: Incident infections, their severity and type were recorded every 3 months throughout the 3-year follow-up. Iron deficiency was defined as soluble transferrin receptor (sTfR) levels > 28.1 nmol/l and anemia as hemoglobin levels < 120 g/l for women and 130 g/l for men. We applied negative binomial mixed effects regression models with random effects for countries, and controlling for treatment allocation, age, sex, body mass index, polypharmacy, number of comorbidities, smoking status, living situation, alcohol intake, frailty status, and physical activity levels. A pre-defined stratified analysis was performed to explore if the associations between iron deficiency and infections were consistent by baseline anemia status.
resultsIn total, 2141 participants were included in the analyses (mean age 74.9 years, 61.5% of women, 26.8% with iron deficiency). Across all participants, baseline iron deficiency was not associated with incident overall infections, but was associated with a 63% greater rate of incident severe infections requiring hospitalization (incidence rate ratio [IRR] 1.63, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] 1.11-2.41, p=0.01). This association was more pronounced among the 2000 participants who did not have anemia at baseline (IRR=1.80, 95% CI 1.20-2.69, p=0.005).
conclusionBased on this prospective study among generally healthy European community-dwelling older adults, iron deficiency was not associated with the incidence rate of overall infections but may increase the incidence of severe infections. Intervention studies are needed to prove the causality of this observation.
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