Functional iron status of chronic kidney disease patients at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Ilorin, Nigeria

BACKGROUND: Functional iron deficiency has been found to be a common cause of poor response to erythropoiesis stimulating agents in anaemic patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). OBJECTIVES: Assess the functional iron status of patients with chronic kidney disease. METHODS: This was a hospital based cross sectional study. The study subjects were chronic kidney disease patients with age and sex matched healthy controls. Full blood count, serum ferritin, soluble transferring receptor, C-reactive protein, serum iron and total iron binding capacity were measured in the patients and healthy controls. Data was analyzed with statistical package for the social sciences software version 22.0. And the level of statistical significance was set at p. value < 0.05. RESULTS: The mean ± SD of the age of patient with CKD was 55.0 + 15.4 years, while that of controls was 52.7 + 13.6 years. The mean serum ferritin, serum iron, TIBC and CRP were significantly higher in patients compared with controls (p<0.001, 0.023, <0.001 and 0.001) respectively. Functional iron deficiency was seen in 19.5% of patients with CKD. CONCLUSION: The predominant form of iron deficiency in our study was functional iron deficiency.