Anemia

Haemoglobin is the iron-bearing protein inside red blood cells, and its job is to move oxygen around the body. It is also the number a routine blood test uses to say whether someone is anemic. Of the 4,375 female reports Loop tested for it in the latest 12-month window, 1,514, or 34.6%, sit below 12 g/dL.

Read the two rows against their own thresholds: they are not measured against the same line. The distance between them is still wide. Across the whole sample, a woman's result is 3.9 times more likely to fall below her threshold than a man's is to fall below his.

The same sex-specific haemoglobin cutoffs are applied at every age and without pregnancy adjustment; an individual diagnosis needs clinical assessment. WHO cutoffs.

The national comparison cuts the other way. NFHS-5 finds 57.0% of Indian women aged 15–49 anemic (IIPS & ICF, National Family Health Survey-5, 2021). That survey measures women across urban and rural India in their homes; this page measures laboratory reports from an insured urban group. Two different populations, measured two different ways, so the distance between 57% and 34.6% is a difference between two studies rather than a measured effect. What this page states directly is that among insured urban women who had this test, a third sit below the line.

One in three tested women is anemic in both editions of this report#

The two WHI 2025 rates above are the ones that edition printed with their counts and bases attached, so each can be checked against the sample it came from. This edition records 34.6% and 8.9%. Set the two editions' reported shares side by side and the female share is 1.9 percentage points lower, the male share 0.6 higher, and the female-to-male multiple has narrowed from the 4.4 times WHI 2025 reported to 3.9.

The key result is consistent: roughly a third of the women tested were anemic in both editions.

Three in ten women are already anemic in their 20s, and male shares climb steeply after 50#

Female anemia is high across every adult age band, from 30.6% in the 20s to 42.0% at 60 and over. Men's rate rises more sharply, from 4.0% in the 20s to 32.2% at 60 and over. Women have the higher share in every age band, but the gap narrows with age.

As a general clinical matter, unexplained iron-deficiency anemia in men is investigated for gastrointestinal causes. About a third of men and postmenopausal women who present with it have an underlying abnormality, most often in the gut. Poor intake and malabsorption are also causes, and other causes of anemia become more common with age (Snook et al., Gut, 2021).

These adult bands cover 4,325 of the 4,375 female reports and 5,166 of the 5,210 male reports; the rest are under 20 or have no usable age.

More than half of Mumbai women tested are anemic; fewer than a quarter in Bengaluru#

More than half of the Mumbai women tested are below the threshold. Fewer than a quarter of the Bengaluru women are. The 29-point difference between the two is more than twice the 11.4-point spread across all five female age bands: in this sample, which reporting area a report comes from separates the female results more widely than age does. Mumbai is the highest and Bengaluru the lowest for men as well as for women. The middle cities change order by sex: among women Hyderabad's 42.0% sits above Delhi NCR's 41.4%, while among men Delhi NCR's 11.9% sits above Hyderabad's 8.8%.

WHI 2025 found the same two areas at those same two ends among women, on much smaller samples: 86 of 158 Mumbai women, or 54.4%, and 89 of 374 in Bengaluru, or 23.8%. This year's female samples are three to four times larger and put the same two areas at the two ends again. Among men in those two areas the earlier edition ran the same way round: 13.3% in Mumbai against 5.3% in Bengaluru. Whatever separates Mumbai from Bengaluru on this marker, it was there in both editions.

What separates them is not something this report measures. Diet, air quality and who ends up in each city's workforce have all been offered as explanations elsewhere, and none of them is measured against these results. Differences in who gets tested where are not ruled out either. The gap is large, it appeared in two independently drawn samples, and its cause is unresolved.

WHI 2025 did not state its haemoglobin cutoffs. City comparisons between editions are not health trends.

Mumbai women have higher anemia shares than Bengaluru women in every age band#

The gap holds inside every band listed. Mumbai's lowest cell, the 50s at 42.4%, is still above Bengaluru's highest, the 30s at 25.2%, and exactly twice Bengaluru's own 50s. The city ranges do not overlap: Mumbai runs between 42.4% and 60.8%, Bengaluru between 17.7% and 25.2%.

Against all five metros rather than Bengaluru alone, Mumbai is highest or joint-highest in every band, and Bengaluru's female line is the lowest and the flattest of the five. In the 40s Mumbai's 51.6% and Hyderabad's 51.2% are 0.4 of a point apart, on 93 and 41 reports — too close to order.

The 60+ groups are small: 79 reports in Mumbai and 62 in Bengaluru. Their age patterns are less certain than the full-sample comparison.

Male dependents are anemic at four times the male employee rate#

The biomarker file separates the employee from the family members covered on the same policy: spouses, parents, parents-in-law.

The pooled numbers say dependents are anemic at more than twice the employee rate. The split by sex shows a much larger gap among men. Among men the difference is 16.2 points, a near four-fold jump that the male employee average of 5.5% hides completely. Among women it is 5.3 points. Women are the group with the high rate whether they are on the policy as employees or as family. The two layers also differ in who is in them: two-thirds of the dependent reports are female (2,240 of 3,319) against a third of the employee reports (2,135 of 6,266). The pooled 17.6-point gap runs across two layers that differ in sex mix as well as in rate.

The male reports carrying the high share are the ones on the policy as family members rather than as employees: 21.7% against 5.5%. Whether a workplace health check reaches those members is a question of who it is open to, which is a matter of scheme design rather than something this table settles. The Self vs Dependent page sets the same split alongside the other markers.

A low haemoglobin says someone is anemic, not why#

A haemoglobin value below the cutoff is how anemia is defined — below the line is anemic, read alongside everything else a clinician knows about the person. What it does not say is what put the number there. Anemia has several causes: shortfalls of iron, vitamin B12 or folate, chronic disease, blood loss, inherited red-cell disorders. Separating them takes tests beyond the haemoglobin value itself.

The low results are not all just below the line: 644 of the 4,375 female reports — 14.7%, or about one in seven — are below 11 g/dL. This is a share of all female reports with haemoglobin values. The clinical meaning of a low value depends on age, pregnancy and the rest of the assessment.

Low haemoglobin does not establish iron deficiency; that requires iron studies, which this analysis does not include.

Heme iron from meat, poultry and seafood is absorbed more readily than non-heme iron from beans, legumes, grains and leafy vegetables (Moustarah & Daley, Dietary Iron, 2024). Phytates, tea, coffee and calcium can reduce non-heme iron absorption, but across a varied diet a person's iron status generally matters more than any one meal component (Hurrell & Egli, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2010). This does not explain the low results here: the dietary survey and laboratory records are not linked. The Nutrition page reports the separate survey findings.

What anemia costs at work, and what an employer can check#

Where anemia comes from iron deficiency, its effects land in places an employer notices.

Young women, Mumbai, and covered family members#

Three results carry this page. Anemia is already there in the youngest adult band of women tested — 30.6% in their 20s, and no later band comes in below it. Which reporting area a report comes from separates the female results more widely than age does: 52.3% in Mumbai against 23.2% in Bengaluru is a wider spread than the 11.4 points between the youngest and oldest female age bands, and both editions put those two areas at the two ends of the female ordering, on independently drawn samples. And the result an employee average hides completely sits among covered family members, where men are anemic at four times the male employee rate.

What the page cannot do is say why any one of those results is low. Identifying the cause is clinical work, one person at a time, and it is a fair thing for an employer to ask a provider about.