Abstract
Background
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)is now the most common chronic liver condition worldwide and its progression from simple steatosis to is severe stage NASH, then came fibrosis and cirrhosis. For its diagnosis liver biopsy is the gold standard to check the severity but its invasive and too much costly. serum ferritin work as acute phase reactant and iron stores. and also serve as a noninvasive biomarker for NAFLD but data from south Asian population including Pakistan are very limited
Objective: To evaluate the correlation between serum ferritin levels and NAFLD severity in Pakistani patients and assess its potential as a non-invasive biomarker.
Method
A cross- sectional study was conducted in Nawaz shareef social security hospital Lahore it includes 130 patients with confirm diagnosed NAFLD through ultrasound. the patient was dividing into 3 grades. Grade 1 consist of 42 patients and grade 2 consist of 55 patients while grade 3 have 33 patient and demographic data like age and gender, lft and serum ferritin was recorded. the statistical analysis is done using spss27 including spearman correlation
Results: Mean age was 46.16 ± 9.33 years; 56.2% male. Grade 2 was the most common (42.3%). Serum ferritin is strongly correlated with NAFLD severity (rs = 0.935, p < 0.001), rising from 216.24 ± 8.93 ng/mL (Grade 1) to 396.00 ± 25.22 ng/mL (Grade 3), an 83% increase. Differences between grades were statistically significant (p < 0.001). The correlation is stronger than most Western reports, consistent with regional trends.
Conclusion: In this research Serum ferritin show a very strong relation with the severty of NAFLD in Pakistani patient and is a valuable non-invasive biomarker. Its routine measurement can aid risk stratification and monitoring, offering a low-cost, accessible alternative to invasive procedures. And next the longitudinal studies are needed to validate cutoff values and prognostic utility.