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Upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) often produces anemia, which can be treated with iron supplementation. To assess the efficacy of iron in this setting, and to compare oral versus intravenous (IV) administration, investigators in Denmark randomized 97 hospital patients with anemia following UGIB to receive a single IV dose of iron (1000 mg of ferric carboxymaltose) at baseline, oral iron (100 mg of ferrous sulphate twice daily) for 3 months, or placebo for 3 months.
Anemia was defined as a hemoglobin level of ≤12 g/dL for women and ≤13 g/dL for men. Blood tests were performed at study weeks 1, 4, and 13. The investigators terminated the placebo arm during the study, leaving data from only 8 patients available for analysis. Data from 72 …