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Query: UMLS:C0240066 (iron deficiency)
 7,156 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Pica was a surprise finding in 8 cases of severe iron deficiency anaemia of unknown cause and 2 patients with pregnancy-related anaemia who had a mixed picture of iron deficiency and megaloblastic features owing to folic acid deficiency. The pica cases demonstrated an apparently consistent pattern: severe anaemia, young age, normal psychiatric assessment, good nutrition and lack of an overtly disadvantaged background. Pica was significantly absent in other forms of anaemia in a series of 53 subjects. The literature is briefly reviewed to highlight the unanswered questions about this disorder. The cases reported do not furnish any clues to the enigma of pica, but reveal an obscure form of idiopathic iron deficiency anaemia. Pica may be commoner than is thought.
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PMID:Iron deficiency anaemia and pica. 377 86

Pica, the purposive consumption of nonfood substances, is a millennia-old nutritional enigma. Its worldwide ubiquity, prevalence among pregnant women and children, and association with both positive and negative health outcomes, especially micronutrient deficiencies, underscore the importance of understanding this behavior. Multiple proposed etiologies of pica are reviewed, including cultural expectations, psychological stress, hunger, dyspepsia, micronutrient deficiencies (Fe, Zn, and Ca), and protection against toxins and pathogens. Currently available data, although limited, best support the protection hypothesis as a cause of most types of pica, although some evidence suggests that pagophagy (ice consumption) may occur during iron deficiency. It is possible that the binding capacity of pica substances explains the association with micronutrient deficiencies; earth, starch, etc. may render micronutrients in ingesta unavailable for absorption. Increased research efforts are warranted and must be hypothesis driven, interdisciplinary, and permit the testing of multiple causal inferences.
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PMID:Pica in pregnancy: new ideas about an old condition. 2042 May 23

Because both the host and pathogen require iron, the innate immune response carefully orchestrates control over iron metabolism to limit its availability during times of infection. Nutritional iron deficiency can impair host immunity, while iron overload can cause oxidative stress to propagate harmful viral mutations. An emerging enigma is that many viruses use the primary gatekeeper of iron metabolism, the transferrin receptor, as a means to enter cells. Why and how this iron gate is a viral target for infection are the focus of this review.
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PMID:Crossing the Iron Gate: Why and How Transferrin Receptors Mediate Viral Entry. 2985 86