Postgraduate Student,

Background: Anaemia is currently one of the most common and intractable nutritional problems globally, estimated to be 1.32 billion people or about 25 % of the world’s population with approximately 50 % of all anaemia attributable to iron deficiency. Adolescence is a vulnerable period in the human life cycle for the development of nutritional anaemia like iron deficiency anaemia when requirements are at peak. Iron deficiency has been seen to delay psychomotor development and impair cognitive performance of infants. Likewise, neurological malfunction in young children and adolescents has also been seen to be associated with iron deficiency. Aims: To explore association between iron deficiency anaemia and intellectual capacity in adolescents. Materials and Methods: Total 100 government school students of age group 12 – 15 years were included in the study. Blood samples collected from participants were tested for haemoglobin level, serum iron, TIBC, Transferrin saturation and Ferritin, and intellectual capacity was measured by Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices. Independent sample t-Test and one way ANOVA test were used to compare mean IQ percentile in different groups. Results: We found that that mean IQ percentile (16.0) of Anaemic Iron deficient subjects was very lo