Is determination of the hepatic iron index of diagnostic value in patients with thalassemia minor and chronic alcoholic liver disease?

✍ Scribed by Miguel Yebra; Felix Lacoma; María Paz Queipo de Llano; María E. Moreno

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 213 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0270-9139
• DOI: 10.1002/hep.1840130644

✦ Synopsis

Recently, Summers, Halliday and Powell (1) studied 42 patients with unequivocal primary hemochromatosis and six patients with equivocal initial results who after prolonged follow-up behaved as homozygotes. The researchers compared these patients with 15 heterozygous cases. In all subjects in the first group, the hepatic liver index was greater than or equal to 1.9, whereas in none of the heterozygous cases did it surpass 1.5, thus lending support to previous works by Basset, Halliday and Powell (2). We have studied a patient (Queipo de Llano MP, Yebra M, Moreno ME, et al., Unpublished observations) with a history of alcohol consumption and thalassemia minor whose liver biopsy specimen revealed iron levels and a hepatic iron index in the range associated with primary hemochromatosis. Genetic study of the subject's family revealed the absence of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) A3 marker, the major histocompatibility complex allele most frequently associated with primary hemochromatosis.

Briefly, this report deals with a 30-year-old man with alcohol consumption of 80 gm a day who sought medical assistance for mild leg edema. Hepatomegaly was detected on physical examination, and laboratory tests showed 5.10 x 10'" RBCs/L, hemoglobin of 12.2 gm/dl, mean corpuscular volume of 73.3 fl; hemoglobin A, of 3.36%, hemoglobin F of 4.19%, AST of 120 IUL, ALT of