Percent Body Fat-Related Disparities of Serum Ferritin on the Risk of Lipid Metabolism Abnormalities in Children and Adolescents

This study examined the association between serum ferritin and dyslipidemia in children and adolescents with different degrees of obesity.

In this multi-stage, stratified, randomized, sampling cross-section cohort study, demographic data were collected by questionnaire from 4320 children and adolescents (aged 6-17 years) in Shanghai, China. Anthropometric measures and percent body fat (PBF) were recorded. Serum lipid parameters were detected by an automatic biochemical method, and ferritin levels were measured by an automatic immunoassay.

Our results showed 70.6%, 13.9%, and 15.5% of participants had a healthy body fat, low fat, and overweight/obese, respectively. Increasing ferritin quartiles were independently associated with a greater hazard of dyslipidemia, especially in overweight/obese participants, and the OR (95% CI) was 3.01 (1.29-7.00), 3.58 (1.59-8.04), and 5.66 (2.57-12.46) across the ferritin quartiles after adjustment for confounders. Ferritin was only a predictive value for dyslipidemia in overweight/obese participants (AUC = 0.64) and was consistent in boys (AUC = 0.61) and girls (AUC = 0.68). The significant positive correlation between ferritin value and lipid abnormalities profiles (except for low HDL-C) mainly appeared in the overweight/obesity group.

The results showed that serum ferritin can be considered an independent risk factor for dyslipidemia in children and adolescents with obesity.

Ferritin overload had a greater risk of dyslipidemia, especially in children and adolescents with overweight/obesity.