Normal Serum Ferritin in Precirrhotic Hemochromatosis

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Abstract
After Wands et al.1 reported that some people with precirrhotic hemochromatosis have normal levels of serum ferritin it soon became evident that others had observed the phenomenon without commenting on it.2 , 3 It was a sad development that a test otherwise so nicely reflecting abnormalities of storage iron should remain uninformative in the presence of 5 to 10 g of excess iron in early hemochromatosis.4 Other phenomena already known about hemochromatosis and ferritin may permit an explanation of this paradoxical low value. The monocyte-macrophage in hemochromatosis responds abnormally to the presence of a heavy load of iron in the body. In . . .