Introduction:

blood donation can generate iron metabolism imbalance and deficiency of this micronutrient, mainly in frequent donors. Objective: to evaluate the effect of blood donation in the iron status in repeat donors of a blood bank in Medellín.

Methods:

prospective study with 70 repeat donors randomly selected. Ferritin, erythrogram, reticulocytary haemoglobin, coprological, physical activity, and iron ingestion tests were carried out; previous blood donations was collected of the blood bank database. Summary measures, frequencies, results of Friedman test, McNemars test, Student’s t-test for paired samples, and the Spearman correlation were calculated on the SPSS 25.0® software.

Results:

the physical activity frequency, the prevalence of intestinal parasites, the parameter of leuko-plateletgram, and the iron ingestion in the diet did not show statistically significant differences between the two moments of the study, unlike the MCV (Mean Corpuscular Volume), MCHC (Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Concentration) and ferritin. In the second stage, ferritin (which decreases as the amount of donations increases) decreased 10% in women and 15% in men.

Conclusion:

blood donation decreases storage iron and the plundering of the reserves becomes more serious as the amount of donations increases, and also as the period of time between donations decreases. It is necessary to implement strategies to reduce the prevalence of iron deficiency, which include nutritional education, pre-donation iron deficiency determining, and medical guidance on the ingestion of dietary iron supplements.

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