micronutr: Determining Vitamin and Mineral Status of Populations

Vitamin and mineral deficiencies continue to be a significant public health problem. This is particularly critical in developing countries where deficiencies to vitamin A, iron, iodine, and other micronutrients lead to adverse health consequences. Cross-sectional surveys are helpful in answering questions related to the magnitude and distribution of deficiencies of selected vitamins and minerals.

This package provides tools for determining select vitamin and mineral deficiencies based on World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines found here.

What does micronutr do?

The micronutr package provides tools for determining select vitamin and mineral deficiencies using R. Currently, micronutr has functions for:

• Detecting haemoglobinaemia or anaemia based on an individual’s serum haemoglobin level;

• Detecting inflammation status based on c-reactive protein (CRP) and alpha(1)-acid-glycoprotein (AGP);

• Detecting iron deficiency status based on an individual’s serum ferritin level;

• Detecting iodine deficiency status based on a population’s mean urinary iodine concentration.

Installation

You can install micronutr from CRAN with:

install.packages("micronutr")

You can install the development version of micronutr from nutriverse R Universe with:

install.packages(
  "micronutr", 
  repos = c('https://nutriverse.r-universe.dev', 'https://cloud.r-project.org')
)

Usage

micronutr comes packaged with vignettes that show how to use the package for the purposes described above.

• Detecting haemoglobinaemia

• Detecting inflammation

• Detecting iron deficiency

• Detecting iodine deficiency

Citation

If you find the micronutr package useful, please cite using the suggested citation provided by a call to the citation function as follows:

citation("micronutr")
#> To cite micronutr in publications use:
#> 
#>   Ernest Guevarra, Nicholus Tint Zaw (2024). _micronutr: Determining
#>   Vitamin and Mineral Status of Populations_.
#>   doi:10.5281/zenodo.7503846
#>   <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7503846>, R package version 0.1.1,
#>   <https://nutriverse.io/micronutr/>.
#> 
#> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#> 
#>   @Manual{,
#>     title = {micronutr: Determining Vitamin and Mineral Status of Populations},
#>     author = {{Ernest Guevarra} and {Nicholus Tint Zaw}},
#>     year = {2024},
#>     note = {R package version 0.1.1},
#>     url = {https://nutriverse.io/micronutr/},
#>     doi = {10.5281/zenodo.7503846},
#>   }

Community guidelines

Feedback, bug reports, and feature requests are welcome; file issues or seek support here. If you would like to contribute to the package, please see our contributing guidelines.

This project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.

References

1. Guideline on haemoglobin cutoffs to define anaemia in individuals and populations. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2024. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

2. Serum ferritin concentrations for the assessment of iron status in individuals and populations: technical brief. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020. License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

3. C-reactive protein concentrations as a marker of inflammation or infection for interpreting biomarkers of micronutrient status. Vitamin and Mineral Nutrition Information System. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2014.

4. Urinary iodine concentrations for determining iodine status deficiency in populations. Vitamin and Mineral Nutrition Information System. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2013.