Iron

Question 1

Assessing Body Iron

Answer 1

• may pursue iron testing in patient with nonregenerative anemia
• difficult to accurately asses total body iron
• must interpret results in light of clinical picture

Test:
- serum iron conc.
- serum ferritin conc.
- total iron binding capacity (TIBC)

Question 2

Serum Iron Concentration

Answer 2

measures amount of iron bound to transferrin

since using serum 🡒 only assesses circulating iron

Question 3

🡑 in Serum [Iron]

Answer 3

🡑in:
- inappropriate iron injections or potentially excess dietary iron
- hemolysis

Question 4

🡓 in Serum [Iron]

Answer 4

🡓 in:
1) true or absolute iron deficiency
- chronic external blood loss (including GI bleeding)
- 🡓 dietary iron or inability to absorb iron from GI tract
2) 🡑 iron locked in storage
- chronic inflammation 🡒 functional iron deficiency

Question 5

Serum Ferritin

Answer 5

ferritin in serum secreted into blood by cells (primarily macrophages)

correlates with tissue iron stores in domestic animals
- can be useful in seperating true iron deficiency anemia (low serum ferritin) from anemia of chronic dz (normal to high serum ferritin)

species-specific immunoassay required to measure

Question 6

🡑 Serum Ferritin

Answer 6

🡑 seen in:
- dz that cause 🡑 storage iron
- dz that cause 🡑 ferritin prod. 🡒 inflammatory dz

Question 7

🡓 Serum Ferritin

Answer 7

🡓 seen in:
- true iron deficiency
- however, if animal also concurrent inflammatory dz, then serum ferritin may be normal/elevated