Serum copper levels in relation to sex and age.

For a reliable assessment of the copper status the determination of several copper parameters has necessarily to be differentiated as to sex and age. In this paper we studied serum copper levels in relation to sex in ten different age groups with use of the flameless atomic absorption technique. Only 50 microliters of serum or even less is required and the method is quite suitable for large scale population surveys. Statistical analyses of the serum copper levels in six different male age groups and four different female age groups showed that the ten age groups can be divided in three larger groups: male 18--60 years, males above 60 years and females of 18 years and older, with different normal values for each group.