Iron Deficiency May Raise Heart Disease Risk

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. A little over half a million Americans die yearly from Cardiovascular Disease. This article is about a research done in the United Kingdom, which is showing links between having high iron levels, and how that can help your heart survive and not be affected by CD. Interestingly enough, previous studies say that high levels of iron could possibly be a negative effect on your heart. These studies were all inconclusive, and were very hard to provide any consistent results showing that theory.

There is a new and exciting study that is being done by Dr. Gill and his team of scientists in London. Dr.Gill and his team conducted a study on just under 50,000 people, while looking at SNP’s, or single nucleotide polymorphisms. SNP’s act as a biological marker, which gives scientist the advantage of being able to zoom in on a specific genome to see if high or low iron levels were detected. To summarize this study, there are definite links between having low iron levels and developing cardiovascular disease, but having high levels of iron does not necessarily mean that you can not or will not develop CD, just less likely.

Key Points:

  • 1Hardening of the arteries, which is the result of plaque buildup is known as arteriosclerosis.
  • 2A team of doctors looked for genetic markers that could indicate an increased or decreased amount of iron in a person’s body.
  • 3In total, the research team combed through the data findings for 124,000 individuals with coronary heart disease.


The results confirmed the hypothesis that higher levels of iron reduce the likelihood of developing CAD. “These findings,” the authors conclude, “may highlight a therapeutic target.”
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Written by HealthStatus
Medical Writer & Editor

HealthStatus has been operating since 1998 providing the best interactive health tools on the Internet, millions of visitors have used our health risk assessment, body fat and calories burned calculators. The HealthStatus editorial team has continued that commitment to excellence by providing our visitors with easy to understand high quality health content for many years.

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