Until recently, the word ferritin was little known to the general public, but over the past year, Russians spent a record 14 billion rubles on iron medications and 3.65 billion rubles on iron-containing dietary supplements. Is this trend simply a fashionable fad in the fight against chronic fatigue, or has ferritin level become a cornerstone of health?
Ferritin is today one of the most fashionable lab tests, with demand, according to experts, having doubled or even tripled over the past year. Under the hashtags #ferritin and #irondeficiency, a huge number of videos and posts appear on social networks, claiming that everything depends on this indicator: appearance, health, performance, and psychological state. Evidence-based medicine has indeed long been sounding the alarm: chronic fatigue, frequent acute respiratory viral infections, brittle hair and hair loss — all of these can be symptoms of iron deficiency anemia.
Ferritin is a protein that acts as a kind of storage depot for iron and is mobilized when the body needs more iron to produce hemoglobin or support vital processes. Its level in the blood serum allows assessment of the body’s iron stores. It is closely linked to the functioning not only of the hematopoietic system, but also the nervous, immune, and muscular systems. In iron deficiency, ferritin drops first, while a decrease in hemoglobin is a late stage, when reserves are depleted.
Precious iron
When iron deficiency is detected, a doctor may prescribe drug therapy. However, over-the-counter products containing iron are also widely available for sale. People often take them on their own for symptoms of drowsiness and fatigue, or for the prevention of anemia.
“In this market segment, there is quite a wide variety of dietary supplements. According to preliminary estimates, in 2025, retail sales volume reached about 3.65 billion rubles, including VAT, and approximately 4.5 million packages were sold over the year. The dynamics are high — about 24% in rubles compared to 2024 and 18% in packages,” says Nikolay Bespalov, Development Director at the analytical company RNC Pharma.
The sales for iron medications are somewhat lower, primarily because many of them are prescription-only. According to RNC Pharma, a total of 15.5 million packages worth 14.1 billion rubles were sold on the Russian retail market in 2025. The y-o-y growth to 2024 were 11% in packages and 14% in rubles. Demand for this group of drugs is growing year by year: for example, in 2024 compared to 2023, the volume in kind grew by 5%, in rubles by 25%, and in 2023 compared to 2022 — by 8% and 24%, respectively.
The leader in retail sales in 2025 was the drug Sorbifer Durules (Egis) — 26.2% of the market; second place was held by the products Ferinject, Maltofer, Venofer (Vifor Pharma) — 20.6% of the market; and third place, with 16.7%, was occupied by the drug Ferrum Lek (Sandoz). Domestic companies hold a relatively small market share — only 4.3% in ruble terms at the end of 2025, but they demonstrate tremendous dynamics — plus 51% in rubles. The leader among them is Sotex with its drug Likferr100, which also shows growth of 62% in rubles and actually ensures the overall result for Russian pharma.
Egis, the market leader in iron supplements, also notes stable growth in the category of antianemic drugs. Irina Kurashkina, Director of Market Access and Interaction with Government and Public Organizations, believes that the growth is due to increased detection of iron deficiency, increased public awareness, and the high frequency of iron deficiency conditions, especially among women.
“This sales growth is not a spike, but a result of systemic changes in recent years: the shift of medicine’s focus to latent iron deficiency, the impact of post-COVID syndrome as a trigger for examination, and increased patient literacy. For us, it is important that growth reflects the quality of care, not market hype. Therefore, we focus on comprehensive work: from evidence-based dialogue with doctors to patient education,” says Irina Kurashkina.
Earlier, in 2024, the “Ferritin-2023” program of the pharmaceutical company Egis was recognized as the best medical and social project in Russia. Within its framework, thousands of women from dozens of cities across the country were able to check their ferritin levels for free, which made it possible to obtain data on the scale of iron deficiency and confirmed the need for its early detection. According to Irina Kurashkina, iron deficiency should remain in the focus of public health, becoming a common task for doctors, the state, and socially responsible businesses.
Ferritin shortage
Since the 90s, WHO experts have been saying that it is extremely important to detect iron deficiency primarily in the early stages of pregnancy and in young children, because iron deficiency affects brain development. According to Dr. Francesco Branca, Director of the WHO Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, reducing the prevalence of anemia is one of the areas of overall efforts to eliminate all forms of malnutrition. Anemia still affects 614 million women and 280 million children worldwide.
Despite its relevance, the ferritin test is not used in routine therapeutic practice. “The problem with detecting ferritin levels is the same all over the world. It is expensive, inaccurate, and not universally available. Each country solves it in its own way. Since 2022, we have conducted several large studies. We had the opportunity to do free testing in many Russian cities, plus obtain anonymized data from a number of laboratories. This allowed us to understand what is happening in the population regarding iron deficiency, and that the situation is serious. Therefore, for the last few years, I have been traveling around the country, training primary care physicians, increasing their awareness of the problem of anemia,” says Professor Nikolay Stuklov, Head of the Hematology Course at the Department of Hospital Therapy with Courses in Endocrinology, Hematology, and Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics, Faculty of Medicine, RUDN University.
Current clinical guidelines state: if a patient belongs to a risk group, they need annual screening for iron deficiency — this includes a complete blood count and, necessarily, iron metabolism tests including ferritin determination. The risk group includes women with heavy menstruation, those who consume meat irregularly, and those previously diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia. At the same time, according to Nikolay Stuklov, 96% of women of reproductive age in Russia need additional iron supplementation, and about 76% have an iron deficiency that requires correction with medication.