A new iron free treatment with oral fish cartilage polysaccharide for iron deficiency chronic anemia in inflammatory bowel diseases: A pilot study

Table 1 Captafer composition

	Twe tablets composition	% RDA	Per 100 g
Energy	1.3 Kcal 5.5 KJ		83 Kcal 347 kJ
Proteins (N × 6.25)	0.19 g		11.9 g
Carboydrates	0.01 g		0.8 g
Fat	0.05 g		3.5 g
Vitamin C	90 mg	150	5.62 g
Vitamin E	30 mg	300	1.87 g
Folic acid	150 mcg	75	0.01 g
Zinc	15 mg	100	0.93 g
Cupper	1.2 mg		0.07 g
Selected fish cartilage	800 mg		50 g

RDA: recommended daily allowance.

Table 2 Patient characteristics

Characteristics	Crohn’s disease	Ulcerative colitis
Age (yr)	20-60 ± 12	30-70 ± 15
Sex (M/F)	9/2	8/6
Simple clinical colitis activity index		3-6 ± 1
Score on Crohn’s disease activity index	59-120 ± 20

Table 3 Serum iron, ferritin and hemoglobin levels before and after the treatment with captafer

	Baseline (time 0)	mo 2	mo 4
18 patients (10 UC/8CD)	mean ± SD	mean ± SD	mean ± SD
Serum iron (μg/dL)	26.7 ± 13.6	46 ± 27.21P < 0.05	44.5 ± 21.21P < 0.05
Serum ferritin (ng/mL)	8.5 ± 6.8	14.5 ± 20.5	14.1 ± 10.31P < 0.05
Hemoglobin (g/dL)	10.96 ± 0.90	11.07 ± 1.02	11.48 ± 0.941P < 0.05

¹Student’s t test for paired data.