Letters To The Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 14, 2015; 21(18): 5751-5754
Published online May 14, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i18.5751
Are children on jejunal feeds at risk of iron deficiency?
Li-Zsa Tan, Susan E Adams, Alison Kennedy, Helen Kepreotes, Chee Y Ooi
Li-Zsa Tan, Chee Y Ooi, Department of Gastroenterology, Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick NSW 2031, Australia
Susan E Adams, Alison Kennedy, Department of Surgery, Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick NSW 2031, Australia
Susan E Adams, Chee Y Ooi, Discipline of Paediatrics, School of Women’s and Children’s Health, Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia
Helen Kepreotes, Department of Dietetics, Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia
Author contributions: Adams SE, Kennedy A and Ooi CY formulated the study; Tan LZ drafted and edited the manuscript; Kennedy A and Kepreotes H contributed to the data acquisition and critically reviewed the manuscript; Adams SE and Ooi CY critically reviewed the manuscript and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Chee Y Ooi, Discipline of Paediatrics, School of Women’s and Children’s Health, Medicine, University of New South Wales, New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia. keith.ooi@unsw.edu.au
Telephone: +61-29-3821752 Fax: +61-2-93821787
Received: November 24, 2014
Peer-review started: November 25, 2014
First decision: January 8, 2015
Revised: February 3, 2015
Accepted: March 12, 2015
Article in press: March 12, 2015
Published online: May 14, 2015
Processing time: 175 Days and 0.8 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Children who are exclusively jejunally fed are prime candidates to develop iron deficiency. We found that serum iron and transferrin saturation levels were significantly reduced at a mean of 6.5 mo post commencement of exclusive jejunal feeds, suggesting that an early iron deficient state was induced. Ferritin levels, haemoglobin and mean corpuscular volumes however were stable during the same period, lending further evidence that the proximal jejunum may have the capacity to adapt to iron deficiency.