We treated 18 heavily iron-loaded patients who had become ex-thalassaemics after bone marrow transplantation with subcutaneous desferrioxamine therapy for 5-20 months. As determined using serum ferritin concentration, transferrin saturation and stainable liver iron obtained in follow-up biopsies, marked decreases in body iron stores were observed with this regimen. Moreover, the liver Keywords desferrioxamine, BMT, iron overload, function tests demonstrate a trend to normalization in all