The researchers envision that CEFT-116 can be used alone or incorporated in a test kit along with other antibodies. The advantage of developing an immunoassay kit is that it can be used in the field by the dairy and meat industries as a way to prescreen their products for safety. An artificial gut invented by ARS scientists promises to accelerate knowledge about the amount of iron available from food and food supplements. The system is the first to model in the lab what occurs in the human intestinal tract. The research has already led to suggestions for improving the nutritional makeup of infant formula.
Iron deficiency is the world's most prevalent nutrient deficiency.
Even in developed countries, it remains a serious concern for women during pregnancy and childbearing years. Children, too, must receive proper iron nutrition. So researchers developed an in vitro model that couples simulated food digestion with a human intestinal cell line, Caco-2. It is a fast, inexpensive, easy method for determining the relative availability of iron from different foods or from different crop varieties of the same food. So far, researchers have used the system to investigate the iron availability of rice cereal, infant formulas and iron supplements.