Elevated Ferritin levels in blood

[Rattler]

Hi again Hygieia,

I would be grateful for your thoughts on elevated Ferritin in the blood during treatment (Inter/Riba/Victrelis)
I am currently at week 20 and a blood test print out from today,shows my Ferritin level to be 839 (the normal range stated as 30-400)
The only other time it was measured was Jan 3rd, 2012, when it was 634.
I read somewhere that raised Ferritin levels are linked to poorer response to therapy.
My question is, should I be concerned with this raised level or is it 'normal' during the therapy sometimes?
Thanks for any info you may have from your clinical practice.
Rattler

[hygieia]

ferritin represents stored iron and can also be a marker of inflammation. what you need is the iron saturation. this is calculated by dividing the iron by the total iron binding capacity (fe/tibc). if this is more than 50% then you have true iron overload. on treatment, we don't usually do therpeutic phlebotomy on treatment because people get anemic anyway. it's not clear to me if iron overload is as much of a factor in the era of protease inhibitors