In contrast to the results in patients with low inflammatory activity, in patients with high inflammatory activity (CRP-levels above the median, i.e., 24.1 mg/l), the diagnostic performance of sTfR alone was highly superior both to the combination of standard parameters of iron deficiency and the combination of traditional markers of iron status with sTfR with higher sensitivity (100% versus 52.4%) and NPV (100% versus 77.7% and 76.7%, respectively) and comparable specificity and PPV (Table 4). Here, CRP is linked to nutritional disorder.