Clinical and Biochemical Assessment of Liver Function Test and Its Correlation with Serum Ferritin Levels in Transfusion-dependent Thalassemia Patients

Aims The aim of our study was to correlate liver function tests with serum ferritin levels in multi-transfused thalassemia patients. Methods This was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in the department of hematology, Khyber Medical University, from January 2018 to December 2018. Thalassemia patients of either sex dependent on transfusion ≥ 1 year and having a confirmatory report of the disease were included in our study. The nonprobability convenience sampling technique was used. The Pearson correlation coefficient was applied to observe the correlation between serum ferritin level and liver function tests. A p-value of ≤0.05 was considered statistically significant. SPSS version 23 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Illinois) was used for data analysis. Results A total of 138 subjects of age range 2-23 years, with a mean age of 12.08 ± 6.02 years, were included in our study. The mean serum ferritin of patients in our study was 3278.64 ng/ml with the lowest of 285.2 ng/mL and the highest of 10940.2 ng/ml. With the increase in serum ferritin levels, a rapid increase in alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) levels was seen. When serum ferritin levels were correlated with total bilirubin level, the bilirubin level remains static with a further increase in serum ferritin levels. Conclusion It was deduced that iron deposition is the ultimate reason for increased liver enzymes. There was a positive correlation between serum ferritin and ALT, AST, and ALP while a weak connection was found between serum ferritin and bilirubin levels.