Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Why it's done
By Mayo Clinic staffYou may have a ferritin test for several reasons:
-
To diagnose a medical condition. Your doctor may suggest a ferritin test if other blood tests have shown that the level of oxygen-carrying protein in your red blood cells (hemoglobin) is low, or if the proportion of red blood cells to the fluid component in your blood (hematocrit) is low. These may indicate that you have iron deficiency anemia. A ferritin test can help confirm that diagnosis.
A ferritin test may also be used to help diagnose conditions such as hemochromatosis, liver disease and adult Still's disease, among others.
When used to diagnose a medical condition, a ferritin test is often done in conjunction with an iron test and a total iron-binding capacity (TIBC) and transferrin test. These tests provide additional information about how much iron is in your body.
- To monitor a medical condition. If you've been diagnosed with a disorder that results in too much iron in your body, such as hemochromatosis or hemosiderosis, your doctor may use a ferritin test to monitor your condition and guide treatment.
- Ferritin. In: Nicoll D, et al. Pocket Guide to Diagnostic Tests. 5th ed. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Companies; 2008. http://www.accessmedicine.com/popup.aspx?aID=3136438&searchStr=ferritin measurement. Accessed Jan. 4, 2009.
- Ferritin. Lab Tests Online. http://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/ferritin/test.html. Accessed Jan. 4, 2009.
- Ferritin. In: Gomella LG, et al. Clinician's Pocket Reference. 11th ed. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Companies; 2009. http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aID=2699841&searchStr=ferritin. Accessed Jan. 4, 2009.
- Beutler E. Iron deficiency. In: Lichtman MA, et al. Williams Hematology. 7th ed. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Companies; 2008. http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aID=2141359&searchStr=iron+deficiency. Accessed Jan. 4, 2009.
- Laboratory reference values. Ferritin. Rochester, Minn.: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research; Dec. 2008.
