Human organisms require sufficient amounts of iron to satisfy metabolic
needs and to accomplish specialized functions such as erythropoiesis, cellular immune
response and oxidative metabolism. Despite its abundance, iron physico-chemical
properties (practically insoluble at neutral pH under aerobic conditions) hinder its
availability and thus specific ligands have evolved for absorption, transport and
storage. Iron plays a corner-stone role both in erythropoiesis and inflammation. Iron
deficit leads to anemia, but this deficit can be functional (with normal storage) or a true
lack of iron: the accuracy of diagnosis results in a completely different treatment.
Correct assessment of iron metabolism allows to diagnose and treat (not only in
treatment decision-making, but. also predicting and assessing response to treatment)
anemia.
In this chapter, we review principal biomarkers related to iron metabolism as
hemoglobin (whose levels are used as a measure of anemia), ferritin (related to iron
storage and inflammation), hepcidin (related mainly to inflammation), transferrin and
its receptors and other proteins involved in absorption and transport.
Finally we review the phases of iron deficiency and its main clinical manifestation:
anemia, both ferropenic and inflammation anemia, as well as clinical implication of
iron overload.
Keywords: Anemia, Cardiovascular risk, DMT1, Ferroportin, Ferritin,
Haptoglobin, Hemoglobin, Hemochromatosis, Hephaestin, HFE, Iiron status,
Iron-deficit, Immature hepcidin, Inflammation, Iron overload, Percentage of
hypochromic cells, Reticulocytes per-centage, sTfR-F index, Transferrin,
Transferrin receptor, Transferrin saturation.
