Background:In the past two decades, Vitamin K has been receiving more attention due to its role in bone health and metabolism. The bone mineral density does not remain steady with age, particularly declining after menopause.Objective: This study is aimed to investigate the relationship between bone mineral density and serum vitamin K1 levels in post-menopausal women, and to evaluate serum vitamin K1 levels as a potential biomarker for postmenopausal osteoporosis.Methods:Serum levels of vitamin k1 were measured in 23 postmenopausal osteoporotic women, and in 15 postmenopausal healthy control women using a standardized Enzyme-Linked Immune Sorbent Assay (ELISA) kit. Bone mineral density BMD was assessed at the lumbar spine.Results:The mean serum vitamin k1 level was significantly lower in the postmenopausal osteoporotic women group than in the normal control group (mean=0.794 vs3.61ng/ml, P< 0.0001), and serum vitamin k1 concentration was positively correlated with lumbar spine BMD among postmenopausal osteoporotic women (R=0.533, p = 0.009), and in postmenopausal healthy control (R=0.563, p = 0.02).Diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of vitamin k1 for osteoporosis were 90% and 98%, respectively (cut-off value: 0.853 ng/ml). The area under the ROC curve (AUC) value for vitamin k1 was 0.984 the odd ratio result was 18.66.Conclusion:Our results suggest that vitamin K1 may contribute to maintain bone mineral density. Vitamin K1 may have a role in diagnosing post-menopausal osteoporosis. Vitamin K1 may be a valuable diagnostic as well as therapeutic marker in post-menopausal osteoporosis.

Objectives: Endocrine disorders continue to affect the health of thalassemia patients, foremost of which is hypogonadism being the most frequent endocrine complication that involves 70-80% of beta-thalassemia major (β-TM) patients. Actually, the role of iron overload in endocrine complications is well known. Our study goals were to investigate gonadal function, assess pubertal status among Syrian male patients with β-TM and correlate hormonal panel with serum ferritin as the marker of iron overload. Methods: 56 β-TM regularly transfused male patients were enrolled in this study, they were 21.91±5.01 years old. FSH, LH, Total Testosterone, and Serum Ferritin were measured for all patients, 52 of them undergone pubertal status evaluation. Results: Results showed that 60.7% of patients suffered from hypogonadism, which was hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in 97.06% of them. Delayed puberty was seen in 7.7% of the patients, while arrested puberty was found in 82.69% of them. All patients had iron overload and 92.86% of them suffered from severe iron elevation. Both gonadal and pubertal status were independent of the serum ferritin levels (P=0.73), (P=0.81) respectively. There was significant positive correlation between FSH: LH (r=0.584, P=0.0001), FSH: Testosterone (r=0.562, P=0.0001), LH: Testosterone (r=0.746, P=0.0001), MCHC: Testosterone (r=0.292, P=0.038), and BMI: Hb (r=0.351, P=0.009). Conclusions: Our findings indicated that hypogonadism, arrested puberty and severe iron overload were highly prevalent among male patients with β-TM. Patients with better gonadal reserve have higher BMI than those with gonadal dysfunction. We suggest that hypogonadism in β-TM patients is not directly related to serum ferritin levels; other potential factors (such as chronic anemia, hypoxia, and genetic predisposition) may contribute. Also we suggest that adequate blood transfusion and appropriate iron chelation, along with regular evaluation for gonadal status and timely intervention can improve the management of aforementioned complications, thus ameliorating patients’ quality of life.