[The clinical significance of glycosylated ferritin in iron overloads and hematopoietic malignancies].

Serum ferritin concentration had been known to represent the amount of total body iron and has been clinically used as a parameter to evaluate the iron storage pool in a whole body. Glycosylated (secreted) and non-glycosylated (non-secreted) forms of serum ferritin (sFt) have been reported by others based on the difference in their affinity to concanavalin-A binding. In this report, we assessed the amount of glycosylated serum ferritin (Glyco-sFt) and the ratio (%) of Glyco-sFt/in hematopoietic disorders including iron overloads (n = 10), leukemias (n = 36), malignant lymphomas (n = 10), multiple myelomas (n = 3) and myelodysplastic syndromes (n = 12). A high percentage of Glyco-sFt was observed in normal healthy controls (n = 18, 78.1 +/- 7.4%) and iron-overloads (61.1 +/- 17.8%) as compared with that in hematopoietic malignancies (43.8 +/- 23.4%, p < 0.001). The amount of Glyco-sFt in iron-overloads was higher than that in hematopoietic malignancies with hyperferritinemia (p < 0.005). These data demonstrated that the same part of serum ferritin in hematopoietic malignancies was the non-secreted form and appeared to be derived from tumor cell lysis. We conclude that assessment of Glyco-Ft is a useful parameter to distinguish iron-overloads from malignant hematopoietic disorders both displaying hyperferritinemia.