Acta Med. 2005, 48: 127-135
The Fate of Iron in The Organism and Its Regulatory Pathways
Iron is an essential element involved in many life-necessary processes. Interestingly, in mammals there is no active excretion mechanism for iron. Therefore iron kinetics has to be meticulously regulated. The most important step for regulation of iron kinetics is absorption. The absorption takes place in small intestine and it is implicated that it requires several proteins. Iron is then released from enterocytes into the circulation and delivered to the cells. Iron movement inside the cell is only partially elucidated and its traffic to mitochondia is not known. Surprisingly, the regulation of various proteins related to iron kinetics and energy metabolism at the molecular level is better described. On contrary, the complex control of iron absorption cannot be fully explicated with present knowledge.
Funding
The authors have been supported by the Charles University in Prague (grant GA UK 98/2005/C/FaF).
References
Copyright
Published by the Karolinum Press. For permission to use please write to actamedica@lfhk.cuni.cz.
