Today I saw yet another patient with hepatitis C who was not diagnosed properly. She is a 33-year-old woman who had a history of drug abuse in the past and received a diagnosis of hepatitis C that was believed to be due to her drug abuse history. What the specialists failed to realize was that this woman's father died from liver failure.
The important point that all her previous physicians failed to recognize was that many patients with hepatitis C have very high levels of iron. In this woman's case when we screened her for high iron levels, her ferritin level was 1150 (normal is 20-50). She had the highest level of elevated iron levels we ever measured. The iron was putting a severe oxidative stress on her system and damaged her immune system sufficiently for her to contract hepatitis C. I have seen a fair number of patients like this now and I have never seen any of them have blood tests done to screen for elevated iron. This is most peculiar since hemochromatosis is the most common genetic disease.
If you know anyone with hepatitis C you could literally save their life by forwarding them the article I wrote about iron and hepatitis C in April.
Mercola.com April 2, 2003