Abstract

The Relationship between the Levels of Serum Iron, Ferritin, and Hemoglobin in Patients Infected with Coronavirus Disease -19

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an aggressive virus that spread worldwide and caused a pandemic infection. On March 11, 2020, the world health organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Therefore, The battle against COVID-19 is likely to be a marathon and the pandemic has a major impact on health care systems in many countries. Objectives: The current study aimed to evaluate the relationship between hemoglobin, serum ferritin, and iron concentrations in patients infected with coronavirus, and the prevalence of anemia in patients with coronavirus disease-19. Materials and methods: In this descriptive and screening study, 70 healthy individuals have been randomly chosen to be considered as a control group and 70 infected people with a Covid-19 have been randomly chosen as a participant in this study. Blood samples were collected twice (1^st week & 2^ed week) from all participants to be analyzed during the period of September 2021 up to July 2022. Results: Results showed that covid-19 infection has effect on the concentration of hemoglobin more than other RBCs indices like MCH (pg/cell) and MCHC because the difference was very low with no significant difference. There was a weak negative correlation between the change in ferritin level and percent of lymphocytes (Correlation coefficient (r)= -0.219 with P value of 0.001). Mean value of ferritin level has significantly (P value = 0.000) increased into high levels during both periods of infection. Percent of anemia among males was slightly low in comparison with females during the first week of infection (35.14% and 36.36%, respectively). Conclusion: Results of the current study confirmed the observations and other results revealed by the previous studies regarding the variations in hematological parameters and some other inflammatory factors in patients infected by covid-19. Therefore, further hematological studies are needed to confirm these results to help the clinicians for better understanding of COVID-19 infection and to provide more clinical treatment options.