Serum Ferritin Fails to Indicate Hemochromatosis — Nothing Gold Can Stay

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Abstract
For several years we have enjoyed a comfortable certainty that serum ferritin would provide, in healthy people, an accurate reflection of the body's stores of iron.1 , 2 Although the test is exasperatingly difficult to perform, once established it seemed able to sort out people with iron deficiency (even without anemia) and those with hemochromatosis (even before the iron deposits had ruined their liver, pancreas and testicles). Now that reflection has been tarnished. Wands et al., at the Massachusetts General Hospital (page 302), have demonstrated normal ferritin levels in iron-loaded people afflicted with preclinical familial hemochromatosis. There is no doubting their data. . . .