Hereditary hemochromatosis as an independent predictor of portal vein thrombosis: national inpatient sample (2016-2020) analysis

Hereditary hemochromatosis is a common inherited metabolic disorder of iron metabolism with variable penetrance. Portal vein thrombosis has several well-known causes including cirrhosis, myeloproliferative neoplasm, inflammatory conditions of the abdomen, intra-abdominal malignancy, intra-abdominal surgery, and thrombophilia. It is unknown whether hereditary hemochromatosis is associated with portal vein thrombosis. Material and methodology. A retrospective analysis of the National Inpatient Sample database from 2016 to 2020 was conducted using International Classification of Diseases-10 codes to identify hospitalizations with portal vein thrombosis. We used multivariate regression analysis to calculate the adjusted odds ratio after controlling for age, gender, insurance type, Charlson Comorbidity Index, cirrhosis, myeloproliferative neoplasm, inflammatory conditions of the abdomen, intra-abdominal malignancy, intra-abdominal surgery, history of past thrombosis, thrombophilia, end-stage renal disease, obesity,smoking, and hyperlipidemia. Results. There were 25805 hospitalizations with primary diagnosis of portal vein thrombosis. Multivariate logistic regression showed that hereditary hemochromatosis was independently associated with portal vein thrombosis (Odds ratio= 4.7, 95% CI=1.15 to 19.35, p-value=0.03) when cirrhosis, myeloproliferative neoplasm, inflammatory conditions of the abdomen, intra-abdominal malignancy, history of thrombosis, history of abdominal surgery, history of thrombophilia, and end-stage renal disease among other factors were controlled.