Iron in an Australian population: Too little or too much?

In many countries in the world, iron deficiency is clearly a much greater problem than iron overload. In Australia the situation is less clear. A large population study undertaken in the Liver Unit of the University of Queensland Department of Medicine and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research under the direction of Professors June Halliday and Lawrie Powell has shed some light on this question. The study originally started out with the hypothesis that the genetic disease haemochromatosis was common in the Australian population and, therefore, significant num‐ bers of Australians had too much iron.