BACKGROUND Discovery of the central role of hepcidin in body iron regulation has shed new light on the pathophysiology of iron disorders. Information is lacking on newer analytical approaches to measure hepcidin in serum and urine. Recent reports on the measurement of urine and serum hepcidin by surface-enhanced laser-desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF MS) necessi...

Hepcidin is an innate immune element which decreases the iron absorption from diet and iron releasing from macrophage cell. In contrast to the chemical iron chelators, there has been limited effort applied to the specific use of hepcidin as a new drug for decreasing the iron overload. Hepcidin is produced in different biological systems. For instance, E-coli is used for human hepcidin expressio...

I ron is the fourth most common element in the earth’s crust and the most abundant transition metal in the human body. It is an essential element required for growth and survival. Maintaining the correct iron balance is crucial for health. All living organisms evolved sophisticated mechanisms to maintain appropriate iron levels in their cells and within their body. It was shown recently that th...

BACKGROUND Hepcidin is a central regulator of iron metabolism. Serum hepcidin levels are increased in patients with renal insufficiency, which may contribute to anemia. Urine hepcidin was found to be increased in some patients after cardiac surgery, and these patients were less likely to develop acute kidney injury. It has been suggested that urine hepcidin may protect by attenuating heme-media...

BACKGROUND The peptide hormone hepcidin plays a central role in regulating dietary iron absorption and body iron distribution. Many human diseases are associated with alterations in hepcidin concentrations. The measurement of hepcidin in biological fluids is therefore a promising tool in the diagnosis and management of medical conditions in which iron metabolism is affected. CONTENT We descri...

BACKGROUND Hepcidin is a central regulator of iron homeostasis. Increased hepcidin concentrations could cause iron-restricted erythropoiesis in chronic kidney disease (CKD)-associated anemia. This cross-sectional observational study was conducted to evaluate the association between hepcidin and CKD-associated anemia in non-dialysis CKD patients. METHODS A total of 505 non-dialysis CKD patient...

Hepcidin produced in the liver negatively regulates intestinal iron absorption, and the bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) pathway is well-known to stimulate hepcidin expression. However, the regulation of hepcidin expression has not been fully elucidated. In this study, we evaluate different systems that can be used to determine how hepcidin expression is regulated. The basal expression of hepci...

BACKGROUND Hepcidin is thought to be the central regulator of iron metabolism. Iron deficiency is associated with low hepcidin concentrations, and anemia in patients with cancer is associated with high concentrations of hepcidin. STUDY OBJECTIVES Our main objective was to assess the potential role of hepcidin for predicting response to epoetin therapy in anemic cancer patients. We also aimed ...

Hepcidin controls the levels and distribution of iron, an element whose availability can influence the outcome of infections. We investigated hepcidin regulation by infection-associated cytokines, pathogen-derived molecules, and whole pathogens in vitro and in vivo. We found that IL-22, an effector cytokine implicated in responses to extracellular infections, caused IL-6-independent hepcidin up...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Prohepcidin and the active form hepcidin-25 are two variants of the peptide hormone hepcidin for iron homoeostasis. Their regulatory role and usefulness as biomarkers of the iron status are uncertain. Our aim is to describe the intra-individual variance of serum and urinary hepcidin-25 and prohepcidin concentrations, the mutual associations of the 4 hepcidin formats, and their c...