[Serum prohepcidin and other iron metabolism parameters in healthy adults].

UNLABELLED

Hepcidin is a newly discovered iron metabolism regulator. It decreases iron absorption from the duodenal enterocytes and inhibits its release from the reticuloendothelial macrophages. The experiments on hepcidin and its precursor--prohepcidin seem very promising and underline the need to establish the reference intervals for these proteins and define the effects of age and sex on their concentrations.

AIM

The aim of this study was to assess the impact of age and sex on serum prohepcidin concentration in healthy adults.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The study group consisted of 79 healthy volunteers (F-29, M-50) between 18 to 88 years of age. Healthy adults were divided into three groups according to age: group 1-33 healthy volunteers aged between 18-36, group 2-20 healthy volunteers aged between 38-53, group 3- 26 healthy volunteers aged between 58-88. Prohepcidin and ferritin concentrations were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). Serum iron concentration was measured on Architect c8000 System.

RESULTS

In this work, we demonstrated that prohepcidin concentrations were significantly higher in group 3 (Me = 292,2 ng/ ml) in comparison with group 1 (Me = 150.7 ng/ml; p < 0.000001) or group 2 (Me = 118.1 ng/ml; p < 0.000001). We observed a positive correlation between age and prohepcidin concentration (R = 0.38; p = 0.001). The oldest group of volunteers also revealed significantly higher levels of ferritin and lower levels of serum iron in comparison with two groups of younger adults. Females showed significantly higher level of prohepcidin (Me = 226.51 ng/ml) than males (Me = 142.6 ng/ml; p = 0.01). We observed that females under 50 years of age had significantly higher levels of prohepcidin (Me = 290.9 ng/ml) in comparison with younger females (Me = 150.7 ng/ml; p = 0.0001), similar correlation was noticed in males (212.3 ng/ml vs 128.3 ng/ml; p = 0.007).

CONCLUSIONS

Prohepcidin concentration increased significantly with age and was significantly higher in women than men. The results of our study show that serum prohepcidin concentration is age and sex dependent.