[The prevalence and etiology of anemia in urban community dwelling elderly population in Beijing]

OBJECTIVE

To estimate the prevalence of anemia in urban community dwelling elderly population.

METHODS

This study was a cross-sectional survey of prevalence of anemia in randomly selected community dwelling residents aged over 65 years in Beijing. Anemia was defined as hemoglobin concentration less than 130 g/L in men and 120 g/L in women.

RESULTS

The hemoglobin concentration was (135.65±14.48) g/L in total of 1 947 eligible participants and was much higher in men than in women [(142.56±15.56) g/L vs (130.95±11.53) g/L, P<0.001]. There were 288 (14.8%) patients with anemia, including 16.3%(129/789) in men and 13.7%(159/1 158) in women. The prevalence of anemia increased significantly with age, which was 7.6% in 65-69 years, 10.8% in 70-74 years, 18.8% in 75-79 years and 24.1% over 80 years (P<0.001). Two hundred and seventy-nine (96.9%) subjects were mild anemia, 8 (2.8%) moderate, only 1 subject (0.3%) severe. Unexplained anemia was predominant, which accounted for 63.2%. Only 16.7% people were diagnosed as nutritional anemia, renal anemia 5.2%, anemia of chronic disease (ACD) 12.2%. There were 2.4% people with overlapped renal anemia and ACD. Compared with non-anemic subjects, more subjects with unexplained anemia represented macrocytosis (7.1% vs 3.2%, P=0.007).

CONCLUSIONS

Anemia is a common health problem in urban community dwelling elderly population. Most subjects have anemia with unknown origin. Further investigation is needed to explore the mechanism and related factors of elderly anemia.

Effect of parathyroid hormone on release of interleukin 1 and interleukin 6 from cultured mouse osteoblastic cells

This study was undertaken to examine the possibility that parathyroid hormone promotes the production of interleukin 1 and 6 in MC3T3-E1 osteoblastic cells derived from mouse calvaria. The cells were incubated in serum-free medium with or without synthetic human parathyroid hormone(1-34). The concentrations of interleukin 1 and 6 in the culture medium were determined by using specific bioassay. The cells cultured without parathyroid hormone for 24 hr released both of interleukins, and parathyroid hormone stimulated the release in a dose-dependent manner. When the cells were cultured with 10(-6) M parathyroid hormone, the release of both interleukins from the cells remained higher than control up to 144 hr. These results suggest that interleukin 1 and 6 release stimulated by parathyroid hormone may be involved in the bone resorbing activity of the hormone.