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Iron Deficiency Anemia Is Associated with Proprioceptive Deficit in Adult Women: a Cross-Sectional Case–Control Study

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Abstract

Proprioception is essential to several conscious and unconscious sensations and automatic control of movement in daily life activities. Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) may alter proprioception as it could induce fatigue, and affect neural processes such as myelination, and neurotransmitters synthesis and degradation. This study aimed to explore the effect of IDA on proprioception in adult women. Thirty adult women with IDA and 30 controls participated in this study. The weight discrimination test was performed to assess proprioceptive acuity. Attentional capacity and fatigue were evaluated, too. Women with IDA had a significantly (P < 0.001) lower ability to discriminate weights compared to controls in the two difficult increments, and for the second easy weight (P < 0.01). For the heaviest weight, no significant difference was found. Attentional capacity and fatigue values were significantly (P < 0.001) higher in patients with IDA compared to controls. Moreover, moderate positive correlations between the representative proprioceptive acuity values and Hb (r = 0.68) and ferritin (r = 0.69) concentrations were found. Moderate negative correlations were found between the proprioceptive acuity values and general (r =  − 0.52), physical (r =  − 0.65) and mental (r =  − 0.46) fatigue scores, and attentional capacity (r =  − 0.52). Women with IDA had impaired proprioception compared to their healthy peers. This impairment may be related to neurological deficits due to the disruption of iron bioavailability in IDA. In addition, fatigue resulting from IDA due to the poor muscle oxygenation could also explain the proprioceptive acuity decrease in women suffering from IDA.

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Data Availability

Anonymized data of all participants are stored locally and any raw data can be made available upon reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Laboratory Education, Motricité, Sport Et Santé, EM2S, LR19JS01, High Institute of Sport and Physical Education of Sfax, University of Sfax, Airport Road, Km 3.5, 3000, Sfax, Tunisia

    Mohammed Achraf Harrabi, Thouraya Fendri, Fatma Chaari & Sonia Sahli

  2. Research Laboratory, Molecular Bases of Human Pathology, LR19ES13, Faculty of Medicine of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia

    Mouna turki & Fatma Ayadi

  3. Laboratory of Biochemistry, CHU Habib Bourguiba, University of Sfax, 3000, Sfax, Tunisia

    Rahma Ayed, Ines Mezghani & Fatma Ayadi

  4. Laboratory of Hematology, Habib Bourguiba University Hospital, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia

    Choumous Kallel

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  1. Mohammed Achraf Harrabi
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  4. Rahma Ayed
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  8. Fatma Ayadi
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  9. Sonia Sahli
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Contributions

MAH, SS, FA, and MT conceived and designed the experiments. MAH and TF drafted the manuscript. MAH, TF, FC, and RA performed the experiments and analyzed the data. RA, IM, and CK recruited patients and collected the blood samples. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mohammed Achraf Harrabi.

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Ethics Approval

This study was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the “Protection Persons Committee for South,” approval number CPP SUD N° 0213/2020. All participants included in the study provided written informed consent.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Harrabi, M.A., Fendri, T., turki, M. et al. Iron Deficiency Anemia Is Associated with Proprioceptive Deficit in Adult Women: a Cross-Sectional Case–Control Study. Biol Trace Elem Res 201, 5162–5168 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-023-03603-5

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