MEDICAL RESEARCH.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20330, 1 September 1931, Page 16

MEDICAL RESEARCH.

WOMAN DOCTOR'S INVESTIGATIONS.

IRON TREATMENT FOR ANAEMIA.

I.KHOIt OtXR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, July 23. During the past five years Dr. Helen M. M. Mackay and her colleagues at the Quoen's Hospital for Children, in the East End, have been studying a group of diseases affecting infants, and they have arrived at tho conclusion that anaemic infants have a proneness to disease twice as great as thoso who are given prophylactic by iron. One of Dr. Mackay's chief helpers has been Mr Lorel Goodfellow.

"Nutritional anaemia in Infancy, with Special Reference to Iron Deficiency" is tho title of her report, which has been issued by the Medical Research Council.

Two groups of infants, as evenly matched as possible, were kept under observation, one group being given iron and ammonium citrate (iron salt), and the othor used as controls.

"The most striking and most important effect of routine iron medication was tho diminution of illness," states the report. Iron treatment approximately halved, tho morbidity rate both for diseases of the respiratory and of,.the gastro-intestinal tract. Two Groups Compaxed, A comparison of gain in weight in the two groups revealed the fact that all infants of the iron group who had three months or moto of treatment averaged over one pound more in weight than those in the control group. In the age group most likely to suffer from iron deficiency, the superiority in weight of treated cases was still more striking, the . iron cases, after . three months' treatment, weighing approximately two to two and a half pounds heavier than the controls.

Dr. Mackay concludes from lier study of nearly 1100 infants that there is prevalent a definite type of anemia, which is due to the inadequate supply of iron, and to a less extent, possibly, of copper salts. This does not seem to be due to a"ny deleterious effect of cows' milk, or to any of its constituents; the same type of anemia was found to occur in breast-fed infantß. The bottle-fed baby can be speedily cured by the addition Of a suitable quantity of iron salts to the milk, without any other change in the diet. Itickets and vitamin deficiency wore proved not to be concerned in the developments of the anemia. Summing, up, the investigator states: "It may therefore be asserted that treatment of infants in their own homes, with iron and ammonium citrate, prevented and cured anaemia, raised the resistance to infection, thereby greatly reducing the morbidity rate, and considerably improved the rate of growth."

Better Hygienic Conditions. In an introduction the Medical Research Council states that before the war girls suffering from "green sickness," or chlorosis due to'deficiency in hemoglobin, the iron containing compound that gives redness to the blood were a common sight in London. The sufferers numbered thousands, but after the war this form of anemia utterly vanished. , "Changes in tie environment of life and the achievement by working women of better hygienic conditions, including higher wages and bettor habits of exercise and of dress, have automatically banished the disease. This is an important and sudden event in social history that has attracted too little attention. Dr. Mackay's report shows that a not dissimilar anemia still persists widespread among infants in London, and that there is still a group of illnesses in infancy directly associated with anemia and readily curable by the simple method of adding iron (perhaps also with infinitesimal quantities of copper and manganese) to the milk diet."