What Is a Normal Iron Count

ellie--A serum iron value for a female is:

Serum 40-170

This is what my Lab uses. Others labs run 65-165 and 60-170. The optimal level, I'm not sure. FLFLOWERGIRL:)

Yep - that's about normal for adult females. For males the range is more like 75-175 ug/dL (micrograms/deciliter). As you get older, you tend to store more iron, so the range is a little higher. Postmenopausal women have a slightly higher serum iron range, too. Kids should have between 50-120 ug/dL.

Some labs report it as umol/L - in which case the range is somewhere around 10-30 umol/L (which is roughly the same as 60-170 ug/dL).

Also note, ug is also written mcg sometimes.

Does the serum iron really mean anything? It's been my experience that the doctors don't really rely on that test anymore and go by the ferritin and your CBC numbers.

As I understand it, serum iron does count. The interplay of ferritin, transferrin saturation, and serum iron is the important thing. Ferritin is a hollow protein that binds up lots of iron molecules - thousands per each ferritin molecule - and stores the iron in cells for later use. Transferrin is a protein in the blood that carries around 2 iron molecules per transferrin protein. When transferrin meets up with its receptor (transferrin receptor) on the surface of a cell, the iron can be transported into the cell where ferritin ought to grab hold of it.

If you have excess iron in the blood or cells that isn't being handled by transferrin and/or ferritin, I believe this has potential to cause problems. It becomes a free radical, doing oxidative damage. When transferrin becomes over-saturated (too many transferrin molecules with iron bound to it) then there is too much free iron in the blood. If the transferrin receptor isn't working properly, then the iron isn't getting into the cells for storage in ferritin. It's complicated - and to get a good picture of what's going on, all iron parameters should be looked at. Something can go wrong at one of the many different points in iron metabolism.

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