Diagnostic strategies for detecting subclinical iron deficiencies and associated to chronic diseases: Due to the homeostasis and the hourly physiological variations in iron’s metabolism, quantifying, both circulating and stored iron, has become a challenge for the experts that try to design highly sensitive and specific tests to quantify not only the levels of circulating and stored iron, but also its effects in erithropoiesis, and the proteins, transporters and receptors involved in the process in order to discard its deficiency. Iron deficiencies go through three stages; the first two are the most difficult to identify because they are sub-clinical and because they can appear simultaneously with chronic diseases inflammatory infectious, neoplacics which cause anemia. In this paper, the principal laboratory tests used to identify iron deficiencies will be reviewed, referring to their sensibility, specificity, advantages and their used limitations.
keywords:
anemia, chronic disease, diagnosis, iron deficiency, transferrin receptor-ferritin index.
