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Preventive Nutrition pp 181–192Cite as

Iron and Heart Disease

A Review of The Epidemiologic Data

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Part of the book series: Nutrition ◊ and ◊ Health ((NH))

Abstract

In 1981 Jerome Sullivan (1) proposed a new theory to explain the differences in coronary heart disease (CHD) incidence and mortality between men and women. He noticed that as men and women age the gaps between them in heart disease incidence and in body iron stores both decrease (2,3). Lower stores of iron levels in women are mostly a result of menstrual blood loss and with menopause the differences in iron stores decrease. As a result, he theorized that body iron stores are directly or positively related to CHD risk, i.e., the higher your body iron stores the greater your CHD risk. Until the publication of results from Finland by Salonen et al. (4) showing a positive relationship between serum ferritin levels, a measure of body iron stores, and the risk of heart attack in men the hypothesis was largely ignored. Since then, however, there has been an almost explosive interest in the relationship of body iron stores to the risk of heart disease.

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Authors
  1. Christopher T. Sempos
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  2. Richard F. Gillum
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  3. Anne Condon Looker
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. SmithKline Beecham Consumer Health Care, Parsippany, NJ, USA

    Adrianne Bendich PhD

  2. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Richard J. Deckelbaum MD

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Sempos, C.T., Gillum, R.F., Looker, A.C. (1997). Iron and Heart Disease. In: Bendich, A., Deckelbaum, R.J. (eds) Preventive Nutrition. Nutrition ◊ and ◊ Health. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6242-6_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6242-6_10

  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-6244-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-6242-6

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