BACKGROUND/AIMS We examined whether regulation of hepcidin-25 by short- or long-acting recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO) is dependent on ferritin and predicts the response to rhEPO in hemodialysis (HD) patients. METHODS Two studies with rhEPO were performed in 9 HD patients with a 2-year interval. Serum hepcidin-25 was measured at 0-18 h after intravenous epoetin-β (EPO) or methoxy pol...

We have studied transferrin receptor expression in MRC5 human fibroblasts in response to tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF, cachectin) or interleukin 1-alpha (IL-1). Treatment of exponentially growing MRC5 cells with these cytokines led to a 3-4-fold increase in transferrin receptor mRNA and a coordinate increase in transferrin receptor protein by 24 h. Under these conditions, stimulation of [3H...

Foodborne transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) to humans as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) has affected over 100 individuals, and probably millions of others have been exposed to BSE-contaminated food substances. Despite these obvious public health concerns, surprisingly little is known about the mechanism by which PrP-scrapie (PrP(Sc)), the most reliable surrogate ma...

We analysed the role of the nuclear protein P/CAF in regulating the transcription of the gene for human heavy (H) ferritin in given cell types. P/CAF is a histone acetylase, recruited to specific promoters via interaction with the co-activator molecule p300/CREB-binding protein (CBP). Histone acetylation promoted by P/CAF destabilizes the nucleosome structure, thus contributing to activation of...

The understanding of the in vitro mechanisms of ferritin iron incorporation has greatly increased in recent years with the studies of recombinant and mutant ferritins. However, little is known about how this protein functions in vivo, mainly because of the lack of cellular models in which ferritin expression can be modulated independently from iron. To this aim, primate fibroblastoid COS-7 cell...

introduction: hemodialysis patients often develop resistance to recombinant human erythropoietin due to functional iron deficiency. in these patients iron therapy can be hazardous leading to hemosiderosis. recent studies have suggested that intravenous ascorbic acid may be able to improve this hyporeponsiveness. the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of intravenous ascorbic acid on fu...