Evaluation of Serum Ferritin in Non-Alcoholic

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a clinical condition that comprises a wide spectrum of liver dam¬age, ranging from simple steatosis to steatohepatitis, ad¬vanced fibrosis and cirrhosis in patients with normal or elevated serum alanine transaminase enzyme (ALT). NAFLD tends to develop in people who are overweight or obese or have diabetes, high cholesterol or high triglycerides. Methods: The study is a case control study conducted on 50 patients who were diagnosed to have fatty liver assessed by ultrasonography and 25 controlled healthy individuals with matched age and sex. All the study persons underwent full clinical assessment and laboratory investigations including ALT and AST-, serum albumin, prothrombin time and INR, complete blood count (CBC), fasting plasma glucose (FPG), (HbAiC) and fasting lipid profile including, serum total cholesterol, triglyc¬eride (TG), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and serum ferritin and iron. Results: The study shoed high statistically significant difference between patients group and control group as regards serum ferritin level p value (<0.001) , and there was high statistically significant positive correlation between serum ferritin level and BMI, TG, AST, ALT, Fasting Plasma Glucose, HBA1C , serum uric acid , LDL, serum IRON ,TIBC with p value (<0.001) . Conclusion: Serum ferritin can be used as a useful marker for evaluation of the presence of NAFLD and useful marker for evaluation of associated dyslipidemia , diabetes and presence of metabolic syndrome.