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Measurement of serum hepcidin-25 by latex agglutination in healthy volunteers and patients with hematologic disorders

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Abstract

Iron is an essential trace metal, vital for various physiologic processes, but excess levels can harm health. Maintaining iron homeostasis is critical, with hepcidin playing a key role. The isoform hepcidin-25 exerts the most significant influence on iron metabolism, making its serum levels a valuable diagnostic tool. However, mass-spectrometry and other conventional measurement methods can be difficult to perform, and some immunoassays lack reliability. In this study, we employed a recently developed latex agglutination method integrated with a readily available automated analyzer to quantify serum hepcidin-25 levels in both volunteers recruited from personnel of our hospital (n = 93) and patients with various hematological disorders (n = 112). Our findings unveiled a robust positive correlation between serum hepcidin-25 and ferritin, as well as C-reactive protein levels, in both volunteers and patients. Among the patients with hematological disorders, there was a noteworthy negative correlation between hepcidin-25 levels and hemoglobin concentrations, as well as reticulocyte counts. Interestingly, the hepcidin-25/ferritin ratio was remarkably low in patients with hemolytic anemia and myelodysplastic syndromes with ring sideroblasts. Our findings suggest that quantifying serum hepcidin-25 and the hepcidin-25/ferritin ratio using this method may be valuable for screening of hematopoietic diseases and other iron metabolism disorders.

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Data availability

The raw datasets that used in this study will be available upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Reagents required for hepcidin-25 measurement were provided by FUJIFILM Wako Pure Chemical Corporation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Hematology, NHO Kyoto Medical Center, 1-1 Fukakusa Mukaihata-Cho, Fushimi-Ku, Kyoto, 612-8555, Japan

    Hiroshi Kawabata, Tomomi Sakai & Minako Mori

  2. Department of Clinical Laboratory, NHO Kyoto Medical Center, Kyoto, Japan

    Hiroshi Kawabata, Naoki Miyazawa, Yumi Matsuda, Misaki Satobe, Yasushi Mizogami, Yoko Kuriyama & Michio Sasa

Authors
  1. Hiroshi Kawabata
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  2. Naoki Miyazawa
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  3. Yumi Matsuda
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  7. Tomomi Sakai
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Correspondence to Hiroshi Kawabata.

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Conflict of interest

H.K. has received an honorarium for a lecture from FUJIFILM Wako Pure Chemical Corporation.

Ethical approval

The study was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki following approval obtained from the Ethics Committee of NHO Kyoto Medical Center (22–008). All participants provided written informed consent.

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Kawabata, H., Miyazawa, N., Matsuda, Y. et al. Measurement of serum hepcidin-25 by latex agglutination in healthy volunteers and patients with hematologic disorders. Int J Hematol 119, 392–398 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12185-024-03720-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12185-024-03720-4

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