Recurrent Infections as an Independent Determinant of Childhood Iron-Deficiency Anemia Within a Nutrition-Inflammation Framework: A Case-Control Study.

A dose-response with infection breadth was observed: infections at ≥2 sites tripled the odds of iron-deficiency anemia (P-trend= .007).

In phenotype-specific models, recurrent respiratory and gastrointestinal infections were independently associated with iron-deficiency anemia (aOR: 2.26 and 2.22, respectively).

Adding recurrent infections slightly increased discrimination (AUC=0.902; ΔAUC=+0.008) but significantly improved model fit versus the model without recurrent infections (likelihood-ratio χ2(1) = 5.14; P=.023; DeLong P = .26).