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Long-Term Studies of Iron Metabolism in Normal Males: Comparison of Red Blood Cell Radioactivity with Whole-Body Counter Data

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, V.A. Hospital, Vanderbilt School of Engineering, Nashville, Tennessee

Correspondence: For reprints contact: L. Clifford McKee, Jr., V.A. Hospital, Hematology Div. 1116, 1310 Twenty-Fourth Ave. South, Nashville, Tenn. 37203.

ABSTRACT

Iron metabolism was studied in normal adult males measuring ⁵⁹Fe in the body by a whole-body counter technique and ⁵⁵Fe in red blood cells. The whole-body counter studies reveal that radioiron counts decreased as a single exponential with a biological half-life between 640 and 6,500 days.

Studies of ⁵⁵Fe within circulating red cells revealed that the counting rate fluctuated greatly in a pattern compatible with normal red cell survival. The radioiron concentration never stabilized, suggesting that equilibration between radioiron and stable iron did not occur in a period of up to 1,400 days. Since equilibration must be assumed for mathematical analysis, accurate estimates of daily loss of iron cannot be made from whole-body data and red blood cell radioactivity, although the loss must be minimal and slow.

FOOTNOTES

^* Present address: The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Md. 21205.