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Abstract
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BACKGROUND: Transferrin is the major plasma transport protein for iron. We aimed to investigate the characteristics of transferrin variant by carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) test using capillary zone electrophoresis.
METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed the CDT tests of 2449 patients from March 2009 to May 2017 at a tertiary hospital in Korea. CDT was quantified using a Capillarys 2 system (Sebia, Lisses, France) by capillary zone electrophoresis. The characteristics of variant transferrin patterns using electropherogram of CDT tests were analyzed.
RESULTS: Seventy-seven (3.1%) patients were classified as variant transferrin. Mean age of these patients was 51.8 years, and the male-to-female ratio was 3.5:1. The most common variants were the BC variants (n = 37), followed by the CD variants (n = 27), unclear patterns (n = 7), BD variants (n = 3), CC variants (n = 2), misclassification (n = 1). In the variant Tf group, the most common disease was alcoholic liver cirrhosis (n = 22, 28.6%), followed by the toxic effects of substances (n = 17, 22.1%), and mental and behavioral disorders attributable to alcohol (n = 11, 14.3%). Nonvariant group showed a predominance of the toxic substance effects (n = 880, 37.1%), a personal history of suicide attempts (n = 634, 26.7%), and mental and behavioral disorders due to alcohol (n = 336, 14.2%).
CONCLUSION: We analyzed the basic characteristics of variant transferrin by CDT tests using capillary zone electrophoresis. The prevalence of variant transferrin was 3.1% of the study subjects. Male patients, alcohol abusers, and liver cirrhosis patients predominated in the variant transferrin population. Further prospective studies are warranted to elucidate variant transferrin in clinical practice.
Keywords: Suicide misclassification
Language: en |
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Keywords
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Adult; Aged; Humans; Female; Male; Middle Aged; Young Adult; Aged, 80 and over; Retrospective Studies; alcohol abuse; Alcoholism/blood/epidemiology; capillary zone electrophoresis; carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT); Electrophoresis, Capillary/*methods; liver cirrhosis; Liver Cirrhosis/blood/epidemiology; Protein Isoforms/blood/chemistry; Transferrin/*analogs & derivatives/analysis/chemistry; variant transferrin |