Study of the role of soluble transferrin receptor/ferritin index in the assessment of anemia in inflammatory bowel disease patients

Abstract

Abstract Background Idiopathic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) includes those conditions characterized by a tendency for chronic or relapsing immune activation and inflammation within the gastrointestinal tract, Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are the two major forms of idiopathic IBD. Aim of the Work The aim of this study is to evaluate the clinical usefulness of the soluble transferrin receptor-Ferritin index in the evaluation of anemia in patients with IBD and especially for differentiation between iron deficiency anemia and anemia of chronic disease. Patients and Methods This study included fifty patients with established diagnosis of IBD either Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn’s disease. They were collected at Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology outpatient clinics and inpatient wards at Ain Shams University hospitals as well at New Cairo hospital in the period from March 2017 to September 2017. They were classified into 2 groups: group I 25 patients with Crohn’s disease and anemia with active or inactive disease, group II 25 patients with ulcerative colitis and anemia with active or inactive disease, group III 25 healthy controls with no significant medical or family history of IBD. Results In the current study there was no significant difference between the different study groups regarding the demographic data except for the disease localization as there was significant difference between ulcerative and crohn’s disease. Conclusion The results of the current study stated that the sTfR and sTfR-F index seems to be very efficient in the detection and diagnosis of IDA, among patients with IBD. Its detection rate is higher using sTfR/F index than sTfR alone and of course higher than the other existing markers. It is essential to mention that the clinical use of this sTfR/F index rather adds to the value of other established markers, such as ferritin, transferrin and Tsat, than replaces them in the diagnosis of IDA. Therefore, sTfR-F index could be proposed as an additional parameter, which can improve the diagnosis of iron deficiency anemia in patients with IBD. This remains to be confirmed with other larger studies.