Message #18077

[mccoy]

Iron and homeostasis: a good and very exaustivearticle on the biochemistry of iron:

http://physrev.physiology.org/content/93/4/1721

Despite fluctuations in the iron content of human diets and occasional blood loss from trauma or child birth, most adult humans maintain plasma iron concentrations in the range of 10–30 μM and iron reserves of ∼0.2–1 g (46). Moreover, iron absorption is increased in mice or humans during periods of iron deficiency, and absorption is decreased by parenteral iron overload (reviewed in Ref. 72). These observations have led to the expectation that one or more systemically acting hormones regulate the major flows of iron and are in turn regulated by iron (72). Surprisingly, the hormone and its function in iron homeostasis were only discovered during the last decade (history reviewed in Ref. 82).

The iron-regulatory hormone hepcidin is a 2.7-kDa (25 amino acid) peptide (Figure 3) containing four disulfide bonds (132, 179, 186).