Abstract 4308: Serum ferritin as a predictive marker for increase in infection and increased mortality in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome

Background: Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) is a disorder of the bone marrow wherein hematopoietic cells fail to develop and differentiate into their mature forms. High iron stores in the body are known to have a detrimental effect on the overall outcome for the patient, however its exact role in the disease spectrum is currently unknown. We sought out to elucidate the role of Serum Ferritin against two end points - infection and death.Methods: The patient data was queried from METEOR (Methodist Environment for Translational Enhancement and Outcomes Research), a clinical data warehouse and analytics environment. We obtained baseline demographics, laboratory data, diagnostic workup, treatment plan, infection incidences, ferritin levels and dead/alive status.Results: We reviewed the records of 2249 patients who were treated with a diagnosis of MDS from January 2006 - June 2014. We matched patients with infection during hospital stay due to any cause (sepsis, febrile neutropenia, colitis, pneumonia, URTI, etc) against their maximum ferritin level. The mean Ferritin in those without infection was 809.82 (95% CI: 575.17 - 1044.48) while the mean Ferritin in those with infection was 2360.09 (95% CI: 1094.69 - 4167.12). We then performed the non-parametric, Wilcoxon-Rank sum (Mann-Whitney U) test between the two variables and concluded that there was a statistically significant relationship between Serum Ferritin and Infection rates (p
Source: Cancer Research - Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Tags: Clinical Research (Excluding Clinical Trials) Source Type: research