Hyperferritinemia and hypergammaglobulinemia predict the treatment response to standard therapy in autoimmune hepatitis

Autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) is a chronic hepatitis with an increasing incidence. The majority of patients require life-long immunosuppression and incomplete treatment response is associated with a disease progression. An abnormal iron homeostasis or hyperferritinemia is associated with worse outcome in other chronic liver diseases and after liver transplantation. We assessed the capacity of baseline parameters including the iron status to predict the treatment response upon standard therapy in 109 patients with untreated AIH type 1 (AIH-1) in a retrospective single center study. Thereby, a hyperferritinemia (> 2.09 times upper limit of normal; Odds ratio (OR) = 8.82; 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.25-34.52) and lower immunoglobulins (