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Published on: August 21, 2017
Iron metabolism in neuromyelitis optica patients
Lei Zhang1, Zhongsi Hong2, Xiaoyu Chen3
1Department of Neurology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, No 600 Tianhe Road, Guangzhou City, China; Department of Neurology, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, No 52 Meihuadong Road, Zhuhai City, China.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to investigate whether there was any relationship between iron metabolism and clinical features of NMO patients.
Methods:
We measured serum iron, ferritin, and transferrin levels in 25 patients with NMO and 25 controls.
Results:
The patients with NMO had significantly decreased serum iron and increased serum ferritin (P=0.001 and 0.002, respectively), both of which were in normal ranges. The serum iron level of NMO patients was not correlated with disease duration, relapse number, or magnetic resonance imaging lesions. After multivariate linear regression analysis, the serum iron level was correlated with age (P=0.003) but not EDSS score.
Conclusions:
The iron metabolism might reflect the chronic oxidative injury in NMO patients. It is still unclear whether iron metabolism is implicated in the pathogenesis of NMO.
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