Prevalence of Iron Overload in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory condition results in dysfunction of the central nervous system. There are multiple causes linked to the development of MS disease including EBV exposure, vitamin D deficiency, and iron overload. This study aims to examine the frequency of iron overload in all multiple sclerotic patients with reported iron serum levels at the National Guard Hospital (NGHA), Riyadh Center between 2015 and 2021. Materials and methods: A chart review based cross sectional retrospective study was conducted using the Best Care System Database, developed by NGHA, to estimate the prevalence of iron overload in MS patients. Data were analyzed to identify the correlation between serum iron and ferritin levels with disease severity and activity, which were clinically assessed by the EDSS. The mean findings of blood analysis were also compared between males and females. Results: The findings of this study showed that there was no significant relationship between disease severity and elevated serum iron and ferritin level, with p-values of 0.130 and 0.856, respectively, 54.1% of the sample had an iron level that was low/very low. The disability score of 20.3% of the sample affects their full daily activities. There was no significant difference between males and females in all means of blood analysis categories as P> 0.05. Conclusion: Our study showed that the degree of disease severity and activity did not significantly correlate with the higher serum iron levels (p-value of 0.130). Further study is needed to investigate the iron level in the active MS plaques of the brain and spinal cord, and assess the severity in accordance to the sites of the specific plaques.