ANN ARBOR— Betsy Lozoff, director of the University
of Michigan Center for Human Growth and Development, has
received a National Institutes of Health MERIT (Method to
Extend Research in Time) Award for her work on the long-
term behavioral, developmental, and physical effects of
iron deficiency—the world’s most common single nutrient
deficiency.

Iron deficiency anemia affects roughly 25 percent of
the world’s babies, and iron deficiency without anemia
affects many more. In 1981, Lozoff, who is also a
professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases at the U-
M Health System, began studying a group of 191 Costa Rican
babies with iron deficiency and has conducted follow-up
studies when the children were 5 years old, 10 to 15 years
old, and 15 to 16 years old. Even though their current
health status is excellent, she has found that adolescents
who were iron deficient as infants have lower achievement
tests scores in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and more
behavior problems, especially related to anxiety and
depression.

The new grant will allow Lozoff and her research team
to assess cognitive, motor, and emotional functioning at
age 19. The goal is to learn how early iron deficiency
affects a wide range of behavioral, developmental, and
physical characteristics of young adulthood, including the
pursuit of higher education, job stability and level,
mental health, early childbearing, obesity, stunted growth,
and cardiovascular health.

The highly selective MERIT awards, provided to less
than 5 percent of NIH investigators, go to researchers who
have demonstrated superior competence and outstanding
productivity during their previous research endeavors. The
awards provide the opportunity to gain up to 10 years of
support. Lozoff is one of just nine current MERIT
recipients and one of only two female MERIT awardees at the
U-M.

Other U-M researchers with active MERIT grants are
Albert Hermalin, Institute for Social Research Population
Studies Center, for a comparative study of the elderly in
four Asian countries; Steven Kunkel, pathology, for
monocyte/macrophage signals in lung granuloma; Rowena Matthews, biophysics, for regulation of folate metabolism;
Richard Miller, Institute of Gerontology, for activation
defects in aging T-cells; William Pratt, pharmacology, for
endogenous steroid receptor stabilizing factor; Venkat
Reddy, ophthalmology, for intraocular transport and
metabolism; William Roush, chemistry, for natural products
synthesis via cycloaddition reactions; and Stephen Weiss,
internal medicine-hematology, for human phagocytes, oxygen
metabolites and inflammation.