This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Snow¹ presents an extremely thorough and thoughtful approach to the workup of patients with vitamin B₁₂ and folate deficiency. Folate deficiency may be found in a variety of disorders; however, its prevalence has decreased dramatically resulting from folate supplementation in the United States and Canada. The US government mandated the addition of folate to cereal grain products on January 1, 1998.² Although supplementation is optional in Canada, there is widespread folate fortification of flours, pastas, cereals, and breads.

We retrospectively analyzed all the results of folate measured in whole blood samples in north central Alberta during 6 months (population, 1.5 million). Of the 1927 whole blood specimens measured (Chiron Automated Chemiluminescent System assay for whole blood; Chiron Diagnostics, East Walpole, Mass) at the University of Alberta Hospital, Edmonton, during a 6-month period, only 5 had decreased folate levels (normal, >250 nmol/L [110 ng/mL]). Of the 12,948 specimens analyzed (Abbott AxSYM . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?