RESEARCH ARTICLE


The Value of Soluble Transferrin Receptor and Soluble Transferrin Receptor-ferritin Index in Discriminating Iron Deficiency Anaemia from Anaemia of Chronic Disease in Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis



Haithem A. Al-Rubaie1, Israa M. Al-Bayaa2, *, Yassmin A. Al-Amiri3
1 Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq
2 Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, University of Karbala, Karbala, Iraq
3 Teaching Laboratories, Medical City, Baghdad, Iraq


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Creative Commons License
© 2019 Al-Rubaie et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, University of Karbala, Karbala, Iraq; Tel: +9647902199460; E-mail: israheam@yahoo.com


Abstract

Background:

Anaemia is a common extra-articular manifestation of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) where anaemia of chronic disease (ACD) and iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) are the two most frequent types. The distinction between these two types of anaemia has always been challenging requiring sophisticated techniques. Serum transferrin receptor (sTfR) a truncated soluble form of the transferrin receptor is one of the parameters that is influenced by the Iron content and supply to the erythrons and is not affected by inflammatory status and therefore the use of the sTfR/log ferritin (sTfR-F) index can be a reliable indicator of functional iron deficiency.

Aim of the study:

This study aims to evaluate the usefulness of sTfR and sTfR-F index in discriminating the most common types of anaemia in patients with RA.

Patients and methods:

The study included 50 patients with RA and 30 healthy subjects as a control group. Complete blood picture, C-reactive protein, serum Iron, unsaturated iron binding capacity, sTfR and serum ferritin were tested.

Results and Conclusion:

anaemia was present in 34/50 patients; 19 patients had ACD, 9 had ACD/IDA and only 6 patients had IDA. Both the sTfR and the sTfR-F index showed a significant difference between anaemia groups (P values = 0.037 and 0.001, respectively). sTfR-F index has shown to be a very useful parameter that can discriminate efficiently between IDA and ACD and between ACD and ACD/IDA in patients with RA.

Keywords: Rheumatoid arthritis, Anaemia of chronic disease, Iron deficiency anaemia, Soluble transferrin receptor-ferritin index, CRP, Serum iron.