Hyperferritinemia: causes and significance in a general hospital

ABSTRACTObjective: To elucidate conditions which cause elevation of the serum ferritin, extent of the elevation in each condition, and clinical relevance of hyperferritinemia in general practice.Methods: We retrospectively studied medical records of all patients who had at least one serum ferritin measurement above 500 μg L−1. Patients who had a marked elevation of the serum ferritin over 10,000 μg L−1 were studied separately.Results: We studied 1394 patients to identify the etiologies of hyperferritinemia. Median serum ferritin level was 1024 μg L−1 and 49.2% had ferritin levels of 501–1000 μg L−1. The most frequent cause of hyperferritinemia was non-human immunodeficiency virus infection followed by solid tumor, liver dysfunction, renal failure, and hematological malignancy. The distributions of the causes were different among groups stratified by the ferritin level. Forty-one percent had multiple causes and there was a tendency that the more underlying causes a patient had, the higher the ferritin leve...