[Discussion] ferritin is doing more work than we give it credit for
ferritin is doing more work than we give it credit for, and I am aware this is a minority view on this board. Different laboratories use different assay platforms with different calibration. Comparing across labs adds a systematic offset that is invisible on the report. Substantial weight loss independently moves…
Not convinced by the attribution. Weight loss alone moves that marker and you have no way to separate the two.
Compared two draws across two labs and spent a week worrying before finding out the assays were different.
one measurement is a point, two is a line, three is a trend
one measurement is a point, two is a line, three is a trend
Disagreeing with this bit: that change is confounded by the weight loss itself and cannot be attributed.
Tracked A1c against the weight trend for a year. The correlation was much weaker than I expected and that was worth knowing.
Reference intervals are typically the central 95% of a reference population. By construction one person in twenty falls outside one on any given test without anything being wrong.
Correction: that marker is reported in different units by different labs, which explains the tenfold difference you are seeing.
Same view — ApoB if you add one thing. It answers a question the standard panel only gestures at.
Yes — same lab, same fasting state, same rough time of day, or the comparison is doing nothing.
ApoB counts atherogenic particles rather than the cholesterol they carry, which is why it can diverge from LDL-C and why it is the addition most worth making.
Added ApoB to the panel after a thread here. It told me something the standard lipid panel had been hiding.
same lab, same conditions, or you are comparing noise
the trend line matters more than any single value
bring the numbers to someone qualified to read them
a single eGFR outside range is a reason to repeat, not to panic