Activable enriched stable isotope iron-58 for monitoring absorption rate of juvenile athletes for iron: a case study.

Activable enriched stable isotopes can play a unique role in studies of nutritional status, metabolism, absorption rates, and bioavailability of minerals. As a practical example, eight juvenile athletes were selected to test the absorption rates of iron during training and non-training periods by enriched stable isotope of Fe-58 (enriched degree: 51.1%) via activation analysis Fe-58 (n, gamma) Fe-59 of the collected feces samples. The results indicated that the average iron absorption rates of the juvenile athletes with and without training are 9.1 +/- 2.8 and 11.9 +/- 4.7%, respectively, which implies that the long-term endurance training with high intensity makes the iron absorption rate of athletes lower. In the meantime, the comparison of the activable enriched isotope technique with atomic absorption spectrometry was performed, which showed that the former was better than the latter in reliability and sensitivity. It is because this nuclear method can distinguish the exogenous and endogenous iron in the samples, but not for non-nuclear methods.