Abstract
Efforts of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Northeast -172 Technical Committee (1990-2004) have focused on assessing biochemical markers of nutritional status as predictors for chronic diseases that plague the elderly. Variance in determinations of iron status (with and without rheumatoid arthritis) was established; utility of plasma transferrin receptors for discriminating anemia of chronic disease from iron deficiency was determined; it was determined that low levels of vitamin E and carotenoids presented risk for coronary heart disease cardiovascular disease (CHD). Alternative methodologies for assessing lipoproteins were evaluated for predicting the risk for CHD. These efforts made significant contributions to the science of diagnosing iron deficiency and predicting the risk for CHD in the elderly.