Percent Body Fat-Related Disparities of Serum Ferritin on the Risk of Lipid Metabolism Abnormalities in Children and Adolescents.

Objective: This study examined the association between serum ferritin and dyslipidemia in children and adolescents with different degrees of obesity.

Method: In this multi-stage, stratified, randomized, sampling cross-section cohort study, demographic data were collected by questionnaire from 4320 children and adolescents (aged 6-17 years) in Shanghai, China. Anthropometric measures and percent body fat (PBF) were recorded. Serum lipid parameters were detected by an automatic biochemical method, and ferritin levels were measured by an automatic immunoassay.

Results: Our results showed 70.6%, 13.9%, and 15.5% of participants had a healthy body fat, low fat, and overweight/obese, respectively. Increasing ferritin quartiles were independently associated with a greater hazard of dyslipidemia, especially in overweight/obese participants, and the OR (95% CI) was 3.01 (1.29-7.00), 3.58 (1.59-8.04), and 5.66 (2.57-12.46) across the ferritin quartiles after adjustment for confounders. Ferritin was only a predictive value for dyslipidemia in overweight/obese participants (AUC = 0.64) and was consistent in boys (AUC = 0.61) and girls (AUC = 0.68). The significant positive correlation between ferritin value and lipid abnormalities profiles (except for low HDL-C) mainly appeared in the overweight/obesity group.

Conclusion: The results showed that serum ferritin can be considered an independent risk factor for dyslipidemia in children and adolescents with obesity.

Highlights: Ferritin overload had a greater risk of dyslipidemia, especially in children and adolescents with overweight/obesity.