Mycobacteria-induced anaemia revisited : a molecular approach reveals the invol...

• Autor(es): Rodrigues, Pedro ; 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
• Data: 2011
• Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/19011
• Origem: RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho
• Assunto(s): Mycobacteria; Anaemia; Ipocalin-2; NRAMP1; Hepcidin
• Tipo de Documento: Artigo
• Idioma: Inglês

Descrição

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.