Mycobacteria-induced anaemia revisited : a molecular approach reveals the involvement of NRAMP1 and lipocalin-2, but not of hepcidin

• Autor(a) principal: Rodrigues, Pedro
• Data de Publicação: 2011
• Outros Autores: Gomes, Sandro S., Neves, João V., Pereira, Sandra Gomes, Neves, Margarida Correia, Alves, Cláudio Nunes, Stolte, Jens, Sanchez, Mayka, Appelberg, Rui, Muckenthaler, Martina U., Gomes, M. Salomé
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/19011
• topic: Mycobacteria; Anaemia; Ipocalin-2; NRAMP1; Hepcidin; Lipocalin-2; Science & Technology

Anaemia is a frequent complication of chronic infectious diseases but the exact mechanisms by which it develops remain to be clarified. In the present work, we used a mouse model of mycobacterial infection to study molecular alterations of iron metabolism induced by infection. We show that four weeks after infection with Mycobacterium avium BALB/c mice exhibited a moderate anaemia, which was not accompanied by an increase on hepatic hepcidin mRNA expression. Instead, infected mice presented increased mRNA expression of ferroportin (Slc40a1), ceruloplasmin (Cp), hemopexin (Hpx), heme-oxygenase-1 (Hmox1) and lipocalin-2 (Lcn2). Both the anaemia and the mRNA expression changes of iron-related genes were largely absent in C.D2 mice which bear a functional allele of the Nramp1 gene. Data presented in this work suggest that anaemia due to a chronic mycobacterial infection may develop in the absence of elevated hepcidin expression, is influenced by Nramp1 and may involve lipocalin-2.