Serum Ferritin was measured by a two-site immunoradiometric assay at the mass health examination in the I district of Shizuoka city. The persons investigated consisted of 197 women ranging in age from 26 to 79. The distribution of ferritin concentration in serum was lognormal distribution in 137 women who showed normal values in all other laboratory indexes of anemia. Their geometric means tended to increase with age, especialy in the group over 50.
According to the limit of normal range which was set at 15.84ng/ml (Mean-1 Standard Deviation in 137 normally valued women), 59 women (29.9%) showed abnormal low value and this figure was the highest of any other anemic laboratry indexes. Among these 59 women, 20 women represented pre-latent iron defficiency.
Serum ferritin showed more negative correlations with Total Iron Binding Capacity and Transferrin Saturation (which were used as screening indexes for iron deficiency) than Heamoglobin, Heamatocrit and Specific Gravities of Blood. Correlation coefficient between Serum Ferritin and Transferrin Saturation was-0.648 (p<0.001).
