Determinants of Hepcidin in Patients on Maintenance Hemodialysis: Role of Inflammation

Background/Aim: Hepcidin could be one of the most important regulators for iron metabolism in patients on maintenance hemodialysis (MHD). The factors affecting serum hepcidin levels were evaluated among indexes of anemia, iron metabolism, or inflammation, as well as the dose of erythropoietin. Methods: 198 MHD patients treated with recombinant human erythropoietin were recruited and serum hepcidin-25 levels were specifically measured by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Results: In multivariate analysis, only transferrin and ferritin were selected as significant predictors of hepcidin in all patients. In the selected patients with highly sensitive C-reactive protein of >0.3 mg/dl, however, ferritin as well as the IL-6 level were found to be significant predictors for serum hepcidin. The serum ferritin/hepcidin ratio was very similar among MHD and healthy volunteers, suggesting that uremic conditions do not affect the ratio. Serum hepcidin levels decreased by only 27% after a single hemodialysis session, but returned to basal levels 1 h after and remained so until the next hemodialysis session. Conclusions: In the absence of apparent inflammation, the serum hepcidin level could be exclusively associated with ferritin in MHD patients and was independent of inflammatory cytokines. Only in the presence of microinflammation, however, might IL-6 also affect hepcidin expression.