Anemia Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Anemia, including details on symptoms, diagnosis, diet, treatment, causes.

MRI R2 and R2* mapping accurately estimates hepatic iron concentration in transfusion-dependent thalassemia and sickle cell disease patients.

Wood JC, Enriquez C, Ghugre N, Tyzka JM, Carson S, Nelson MD, Coates TD

Department of Pediatrics, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, 4650 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027-0034, USA. jwood@chla.usc.edu

Measurements of hepatic iron concentration (HIC) are important predictors of transfusional iron burden and long-term outcome in patients with transfusion-dependent anemias. The goal of this work was to develop a readily available, noninvasive method for clinical HIC measurement. The relaxation rates R2 (1/T2) and R2* (1/T2*) measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have different advantages for HIC estimation. This article compares noninvasive iron estimates using both optimized R2 and R2* methods in 102 patients with iron overload and 13 controls. In the iron-overloaded group, 22 patients had concurrent liver biopsy. R2 and R2* correlated closely with HIC (r2 > or = .95) for HICs between 1.33 and 32.9 mg/g, but R2 had a curvilinear relationship to HIC. Of importance, the R2 calibration curve was similar to the curve generated by other researchers, despite significant differences in technique and instrumentation. Combined R2 and R2* measurements did not yield more accurate results than either alone. Both R2 and R2* can accurately measure hepatic iron concentration throughout the clinically relevant range of HIC with appropriate MRI acquisition techniques.

Published 4 August 2005 in Blood, 106(4): 1460-5.
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