Introduction:

The aims of this study were to determine the iron-deficiency anemia prevalence per dynamic and static component and thus identify sports with the highest prevalence of iron-deficiency anemia, and to determine the association between sports, sex, age and iron-deficiency anemia.

Material and Methods:

Observational study and cross-sectional analytic. The database of the National Biomedical Services Directorate of the Peruvian Institute of Sport was used for the period from January to December 2013. Athletes aged 18-35 were selected from a total universe of 1833 athletes. Numerical variables were evaluated using the Student’s T-test or the Mann-Whitney U-test, depending on the normality of the variables. Categorical variables were evaluated using the χ2 test. Crude and adjusted Prevalence Ratios were calculated using the Poisson regression with robust error variance, to assess the association between sex and iron-deficiency anemia.

Results:

633 athletes were analyzed, being mostly male (68.4%). Variables included in the bivariate model were sex, sports age and iron supplementation, which were also included in the multivariate model, and an association between iron-deficiency anemia and sports age (p=0.01) was found. No association between sex and iron-deficiency anemia was found (RPa=0.96; 95%CI:0.60-1.40; p=0.85). However, the prevalence of iron-deficiency anemia was above 15% (17.9% men and 16.8% women). The main result was that there is no significant difference when comparing the prevalence of iron-deficiency anemia between men and women (17.9% and 16.8%).

Conclusions:

Higher prevalence of iron-deficiency anemia was found in sports with high static and dynamic component. There is not association between iron-deficiency anemia and sex in athletes from the Peruvian Institute of Sport in 2013.

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