Association of serum ferritin with coronary artery disease

Background: Published results regarding the association of serum ferritin with coronary artery disease (CAD) were conflicting, thus a case-control study and a meta-analysis were performed to assess the association between serum ferritin and CAD risk. Methods: A hospital-based case-control study was conducted with 258 CAD cases and 282 healthy controls. The restricted cubic spline (RCS) function with three knots was used to assess the concentration-risk association between serum ferritin and CAD risk. A meta-analysis was performed including 20 outcomes. Fixed or random effect pooled measure was selected on the basis of homogeneity test among studies. Results: In our case-control study, compared with serum ferritin concentrations less than 200 mu g/L as the reference, the trend of CAD risk increased by 4.2% for every 50 mu g/L increase in serum ferritin (OR = 1.042, 95% CI = 0.946-1.147). In the meta-analysis and after excluding articles that were the key contributors to between-study heterogeneity, the standardized mean difference (SMD) of serum ferritin was associated with increased CAD risk (FEM: SMD = 0.119, 95% CI = 0.073-0.165). And the concentration-risk meta-analysis suggested that, for every 50 mu g/L increase of serum ferritin, the risk of CAD increases by 2.4% (OR = 1.024, 95% CI = 1.001-1.048). Conclusion: These findings indicate that serum ferritin is weakly positively associated with CAD risk. This risk needs to be confirmed by further studies. (c) 2012 The Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.