الفهرس 
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Abstract
Iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia in adolescence are major public health problems. The incidence of anemia in adolescents tends to increase with age and corresponds with the highest acceleration of growth during adolescence.
Iron deficiency (ID) and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) lead to many non-hematological disturbances as cognitive impairments and poor school performance in adolescents. Among the cognitive impairments caused by ID& IDA, those related to intelligence, learning and memory.
The present study was conducted to determine the frequency of iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia in school aged adolescent girls and to assess the effect of iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia on cognitive functions.
This study was conducted upon 228 girls in a village school situated in Upper Egypt (Talla preparatory school for girls) during the period from September 2014 to May 2015. All 228 girls were subjected to laboratory investigations in the form of serum ferritin level and complete blood count to determine frequency of iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia among them.
Only 121girls from the 228 agreed to take the Stanford Binet IQ test and those were classified according to their serum ferritin and hemoglobin level into three groups:
group A: Non-anemic non-iron deficient group 52(42.6%).
group B: Non-anemic iron deficient group 19(15.6%).
group C. Anemic iron deficient group 50(41.8% ).
In our study the frequency of anemia (Hb<12 gm/dl) was 39.9%, the frequency of iron deficiency anemia was 30.2% and that of iron deficiency without anemia was 11.4%.
Girls with iron deficiency & iron deficiency anemia had received significantly less food rich in iron and more food blocking iron absorbtion. Also, obesity and underweight were more frequent in those girls.
Our study found that iron deficient girls with or without anemia had low scholastic performance in the form of low mathematics score, low scores in Stanford Binet IQ test[working memory (short term memory) and knowledge (long term memory)] and low FSIQ scores than non-iron deficient non-anemic girls. The cognitive scores were the lowest in the iron deficient anemic girls.
In conclusion, the frequency of anemia among adolescent studied girls was 39.9%, frequency of iron deficiency anemia was 30.2% and that of iron deficiency without anemia was 11.4%.Iron deficiency was associated with low school performance and low scores in Stanford Binet IQ test and they were even lower if iron deficiency was associated with anemia.