Help with blood results please

[cherrybaby]

Writing this for a friend who is back in bed

.

Friend has been ill for many years, 17 years ago she was started on thyroxine then taken off it after 18 months, she felt great on the thyroxine but has slowly got worse since they stopped the thyroxine. She is constantly at the GP's who will only do a TSH & she has always been told it is borderline so no action. When she was on thyroxine 17 years ago she was also diagnosed with high blood pressure & was prescribed Lisinopril and Angitil which she has been taking for 17 years yet her BP is still very high & last week GP gave her a prescription for Bisoprolol to take alongside the Lisinopril and Angitil.

With my nagging she was able to convince the GP to do further blood tests, once again he only did the TSH & not the full thyroid panel we requested. Here are the results of the tests she has just had & any help is greatly appreciated.

TSH 0.57 normal range (0.4 - 4.00)

Vit D 18.5 normal range (50 – 250)

Albumin 50.2 normal range (35-50)

Ferritin: 231 normal range (13 – 150)

[helvella]

That ferritin level is well over range. Interpretation of what that means is more difficult because several things could cause it.

Wiki says:

Elevatedp

If ferritin is high, there is iron in excess or else there is an acute inflammatory reaction in which ferritin is mobilized without iron excess. For example, ferritins may be high in infection without signalling body iron overload.

Ferritin is also used as a marker for iron overload disorders, such as hemochromatosis or hemosiderosis. Adult-onset Still's disease, some porphyrias, and hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis/macrophage activation syndrome are diseases in which the ferritin level may be abnormally raised.

As ferritin is also an acute-phase reactant, it is often elevated in the course of disease. A normal C-reactive protein can be used to exclude elevated ferritin caused by acute phase reactions.

According to a study of anorexia nervosa patients, ferritin can be elevated during periods of acute malnourishment, perhaps due to iron going into storage as intravascular volume and thus the number of red blood cells falls.

This NHS NNUH trust document may provide some pointers:

nnuh.nhs.uk/docs%5Cdocument...

Of course, if that ferritin is related to her other medicines - all bets are off!

If would be good to see that low vitamin D addressed, and vitamin B12 and folates considered.

Rod