Background: The relationship between the concentration of serum ferritin, transferrin, iron and their prognostic value for patients with cerebral infarction during the acute phase.

Subjects and Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive methods, 104 cases including 52 patients with cerebral infarction and 52 control subjects in Hue University Hospital. Data were processed by usual medical statistics and SPSS 15.0.

Results: Mean age of cerebral infarction group was 64.90 ± 11.85 and 65.17 ± 11.48 in control group (p > 0.05). (i) In cerebral infarction group, ferritin concentration (378.4 mg/L) and iron concentration (25.2 mmol/L) were, higher than the control group (p < 0.001 and p < 0.01, respectively). There was no difference in transferrin concentration between patient group and the control group (p > 0.05); (ii) Ferritin concentrations had good diagnostic value with confidence interval of 95% (0.784 - 0.924), AUC was 0.862. Iron had little diagnostic value than ferritin in cerebral infarction patients with confidence interval of 95% (0.564 - 0.753), AUC was 0.664; (iii) Analysis of multivariate logistic regression showed that both ferritin and iron have used to predict cerebral infarction (Glasgow = 15), AUC was 0.768 with a sensitivity and specificity of 77.78% and 64%, respectively; (iv) Ferritin levels correlated with cerebral infarction lesion size > 2cm, higher than serum iron, with AUC was 0.91. With the choice of cut-off point ≥ 403.1, specificity was high (approximately 92%).

Conclusions: The concentration of serum ferritin, iron was high and correlated with severity in cerebral infarction patients with acute phase.