[Radio-immunometric determination of the ferritin for evaluation of the iron storage pool (author's transl)].

Seventy-three patients with several haematological diseases have been studied with radio-iron-kinetic, cyto-chemical measurement of iron in the bone marrow, and radio-immunometric determination of the ferritin in the serum. This method gives results which correlate significantly with other methods which evaluate the iron storage pool, in normal or iron-deficient patients. In some cases, an excess of serum ferritin, contrasting with normal serum iron, is confirmed by cytochemical and/or Fe-kinetic studies. In myeloproliferative diseases however, secretion of ferritin by immature cells may induce an excess of serum ferritin. In such cases, the dosage of ferritinaemia cannot be considered as an index of the iron storage pool. Future development of specific dosage of isoferritins could enable to measure the true iron stores, as well as to give an index estimating the evolution of the abnormal cell population.