Iron Infusion #5The Day After

Finished my sequence of 5 iron infusions yesterday. I didn't get the V-Man for my IV but a nice nurse - she rocked - she placed my IV with less pain than a typical blood draw. An hour and a half later I was done.

I haven't really noticed any side effects - maybe a bit of headache, a tiny bit of agitation/edginess. I haven't noticed a huge surge in energy, yet, but I also notice that I don't feel the need to take a nap today. Or yesterday. So my energy must be on the rise.

I finally located one of the authors of the "Ferritin and Infertility" paper that was published in Lancet in 1991. I wrote to him yesterday and he got back to me immediately with a copy of the original article (a 2 pager, actually) plus three other articles. I spent a few hours reading and absorbing all that I could.

Essentially, there were 7 women in his study (n=113) where they were evaluating women with scalp hair shedding who had beginning ferritin levels that ranged from 14 to 40. Ages from 32 to 42. All were put on iron supplements (35mg oral, daily) and vitamin C (200mg) and within 28 weeks (roughly 7 months) their ranges had increased to 36-76 and all were pregnant. 3 of these women already knew that they were infertile and the other 4 were merely having unprotected sex before but didn't get pregnant naturally. While 7 out of 113 doesn't jump out and grab you, their beginning and ending ferritin values and the fact that they got pregnant DOES!

So there is a clear connection between ferritin and infertility. One of the authors wrote that they weren't sure if iron functioned in ovulation or implantation. I would reckon that implantation is the issue as plenty of women are able to undergo IVF and produce large numbers of oocytes and high grade embryos without issue, in spite of their low ferritin values. This much I've been able to see in posts on many different IVF boards. I will stab in the dark and say that I would bet that repeated implantation failure is highly correlated to low ferritin values. I would love to see data on this. I also noticed a mention that immunological issues might also be linked to low ferritin values. A study to look at reproductive immunological issues and iron values would be valuable to the infertility world. Hopefully one will be forthcoming.