• Jun Zhou, Jing Zhou, Zhi-Qi Wu, Hemant Goyal, and Hua-Guo Xu.
• Department of Laboratory Medicine, the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
• Int. J. Clin. Pract. 2021 Mar 1; 75 (3): e13704.

AimsThe relationship between ferritin levels and survival in adult hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) has been evaluated in previous studies. However, Admission-to-discharge percentage ferritin reduction (named as ferritin index) level in adult patients with HLH has never been evaluated to predict 6-month survival.MethodsThe demographic, laboratory and clinical information of 102 newly diagnosed adult HLH patients were collected. Regression analysis, receiver operating curve and Kaplan-Meier curves were analysed to explore the performance of ferritin levels.ResultsFerritin index and discharge ferritin level were significantly different between survivour and non-survivour group (all P < .001). Ferritin index had the highest area under the curve (AUC) for predicting the survival (AUC = 0.802, P < .001) followed by discharge ferritin (AUC = 0.746, P < .001). Kaplan-Meier analysis showed a significant difference in survival according to optimum cutoff values of ferritin index ≥ 10.19% (P < .001) or discharge ferritin ≤ 1056.1 μg/L (P < .001). Multivariate analysis confirmed that ferritin index and discharge ferritin are independent predictors of 6-month survival (ferritin index: odds ratio (HR) 6.237, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.075-18.774, P = .001; discharge ferritin: HR 6.024, 95% CI 1.894-19.231, P = .002). In addition, the combination of a ferritin index ≥ 10.19% and discharge ferritin ≤ 1056.1 μg/L had a significantly higher 6-month survival (P < .001).ConclusionFerritin index is a better predictor of 6-month survival than admission and discharges ferritin levels in adult patients with HLH.© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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