Hiya Everyone! It's been a very long time since I've posted, but please know I read you daily. As a refresher, I have autoimmune metaplastic atrophic gastritis (AMAG - not to be confused with MAGA!! ). I was diagnosed almost 4 years ago. Under a gastroenterologist's care, I take zinc and copper (they do not absorb), b12 sublingual (initial testing all those years ago showed that I have PA from the AMAG); folic acid; and vitamin D3. I have yearly endoscopies and for the last three the results have trended a little worse each time; i.e., in the beginning it was just atrophic then became metaplastic and now polyps removed this past January - thank God no cancer). I also have my zinc and copper tested every two months as docs are having a hard time keeping me consistent - and zinc and copper are toxic if not carefully taken - my dosages are 50 mg of zinc and 4 of copper. I have my iron, TIBC, Transferrin, homocysteine, and MMA tested regularly. My question is to all of you (FlipperTD?): why would my iron drop from 141 Mid-January to 78 now in February and my TIBC accelerate from 275 in November to 354 now and my transferrin drop from 51.3% in November to 22% now? Homocysteine and MMA were perfect. Thanks for any insight you can give.
Blood Test Results: Hiya Everyone! It... - Pernicious Anaemi...
Blood Test Results
Bleeding (e.g. from your colon or stomach or just from being female and having heavy periods) could cause your iron to drop. I hope your doctors can figure out what is going on. Very best wishes!
High TIBC comes from your iron being low. mountsinai.org/health-libra...
Scientist, not medic. Observations, rather than advice!
Iron will drop if you have increased utilisation over intake. If you have some blood loss of any reason, then you lose 1 milligram of iron with 1 millilitre of red cells lost.
If you lose iron then your TIBC will tend to rise. Two sides of the same [or similar] coin. If you lose enough iron, your MCV and MCH will start to fall. Eventually your Hb will start to fall too. However, your body will 'right itself'. If you have an inflammatory process then your ferritin will rise as part of your response. We can't predict what's going to happen but we can often interpret the numbers and work it out.
Homocysteine and MMA are good tests to find out how things are, and if they're fine then that sounds good to me.
Only by testing things very regularly do we come across situations like this, because we inhabit a fine-tuned system that is very good at looking after itself.
If we lose iron, then iron absorption tends to increase to compensate, and then it balances out once more.
If we lose blood then we have mechanisms that go into overdrive to replace the loss, and it all settles down once more without us needing to do anything.
Many years ago the hospital where I worked had a very busy abdominal surgery unit doing some very elegant procedures. As part of this we did considerable amounts of monitoring by a range of blood tests; in those days the systems we used needed much larger samples than nowadays. Typically 20-30ml of blood taken each day.
One common clinical detail on request forms is 'Investigation of Anaemia' but this was obvious, and re-translated into 'Anaemia of Investigation'.
Some of the patients even needed 'top-up transfusions' because they were in our 'care' for several weeks. We were taking a half pint of blood from them every week. As I've said, it's a fine balance and it looks after itself whether we test stuff or not.
A full blood count is usually a good guide as to what's going on, ideally plotted on a spreadsheet.
Good luck. Stay healthy.
Thank you so much, Flipper TD. I will re-read your thorough reply to help me understand it better and then discuss with my doc. ❤️
👍Beware of anyone who claims to know exactly what's going on, as most of the time we're whistling in the dark! If we think we know what's going on, it's usually because we don't realise quite how complicated things really are!
The commonest tests [such as CBC] are commonly used because they're generally a straightforward guide to what's going on and carry a lot of information, easily obtained. It's possible to extract a lot of information from them. Especially if you've had a very elaborate profile done already. It's best to assume that we're in a stable state much of the time, as the human body is excellent at looking after itself.👍
Further blood test results
Waiting for Results - MMA & Homocysteine - how long from taking blood to getting results (approx), pls?
too late to prove b12 deficiency?!
Weird symptoms- B12 deficiency? 
