Domestic medical researchers discovered that women are more vulnerable to iron deficiency anemia than Namsung when meals are inadequate. Symptoms of dizziness appear when iron is low, indicating that women face a higher risk than Namsung.
Kyunghee University announced on the 24th that a research team led by professor Yeon Dong-geon analyzed "the disease burden from dietary iron deficiency" and published the results in an international journal. The first author of the paper is Lee Su-ji, a 4th-year medical student at Kyunghee University.
The research team tracked dietary iron deficiency anemia occurring in 204 countries worldwide over a 30-year period from 1991 to 2021. While there have been previous studies on iron deficiency anemia, this research focused specifically on iron deficiency anemia caused by dietary insufficiency.
The research found that 1.27 billion people worldwide suffered from iron deficiency anemia due to inadequate diets. The prevalence rate of women was twice that of Namsung. Additionally, infants aged 6 to 11 months, the elderly, people in South Asia, and those in Sub-Saharan Africa were particularly vulnerable to anemia.
The research team explains that health policies prioritizing women, children, and low-income countries should be established. In particular, low-income countries have higher probabilities of suffering from iron deficiency anemia than high-income countries due to expensive food costs and a lack of diversity.
This study involved 900 researchers, including those from Kyunghee University, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Professor Yeon Dong-geon noted, "This research contributes to the nutritional goals of the World Health Organization (WHO)." The results were published in the international journal "Nature Medicine" on the 22nd.
References
Nature Medicine(2025), DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03624-8