Normal Serum Ferritin in Precirrhotic Hemochromatosis

Abstract

After Wands et al.¹ reported that some people with precirrhotic hemochromatosis have normal levels of serum ferritin it soon became evident that others had observed the phenomenon without commenting on it.^{2 , 3} It was a sad development that a test otherwise so nicely reflecting abnormalities of storage iron should remain uninformative in the presence of 5 to 10 g of excess iron in early hemochromatosis.⁴ Other phenomena already known about hemochromatosis and ferritin may permit an explanation of this paradoxical low value. The monocyte-macrophage in hemochromatosis responds abnormally to the presence of a heavy load of iron in the body. In . . .