Association of B12 deficiency and anemia synergistically increases the risk of high TNF-α levels among adolescent girls

Abstract

We investigated the association between iron status, B₁₂, and inflammatory markers among 101 adolescent girls. We found that B₁₂ showed significant negative association with tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) (r_s = −0.232, P = 0.020) and positive association with serum ferritin (SF) (r_s = 0.209, P = 0.036) among girls. Our results showed that hepcidin discriminates anemic and non-anemic population under normal B₁₂ conditions. The logistic regression analysis revealed that the risk of having higher TNF-α levels was 13.2 times higher in low B₁₂ girls in the presence of anemia compared to the girls having normal hemoglobin and B₁₂ levels.