• Ersi Voskaridou, Maroussa Douskou, Evangelos Terpos, Ioannis Papassotiriou, Alexandra Stamoulakatou, Akis Ourailidis, Aphroditi Loutradi, and Dimitris Loukopoulos.
• Thalassaemia Centre, Laikon General Hospital, 16 Sevastoupoleos Street, GR-11526 Athens, Greece. ersi_voskaridou@yahoo.com
• Br. J. Haematol. 2004 Sep 1; 126 (5): 736-42.

AbstractMagnetic resonance imaging (MRI) appears to be useful for monitoring iron overload in thalassaemia. We studied 106 patients with beta-thalassaemia: 80 with thalassaemia major (TM) and 26 with thalassaemia intermedia (TI). Thirty-five patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) were also evaluated. Serum ferritin, liver and myocardial T2-relaxation time and liver iron concentration (LIC) were measured. LIC values, based on biopsies from 29 patients, showed a close inverse correlation with the respective liver T2-values, along with a strong positive correlation with ferritin levels in all patients. Heart T2-values correlated with left ventricular ejection fraction in TM and SCD, but not in TI patients. Both liver and heart T2-values were significantly lower in TM patients than those of TI, and SCD patients. Ferritin levels showed a strong correlation with liver T2-values in all three groups of patients. Similarly, a negative correlation was found between serum ferritin levels and heart T2-values in TM, but not in TI and SCD patients. Heart and liver T2-values showed a significant correlation only in TM patients. These results suggest that the MRI technique (T2 relaxation time) used in our study, is a reliable, safe and non-invasive method for the assessment of the deposition of iron in the liver; results for the heart become reliable only when there is heavy iron deposition.

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