Introduction: Hepcidin is a regulatory protein in iron metabolism; we do not know the role in chronic kidney disease anemia.
Methods: 22 patients with CKD anemia and 15 patients with CKD without anemia were investigated. CKD anemia-inclusion criteria: over 18 years, hemoglobin ≤12 g/dl for women and ≤13 g/dl for men, no treatment for anemia 6 months before enrollment, glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) <60 ml/min/1.73m² and stable creatinine three months before enrollment. Exclusion criteria: infection, bleeding, malignancy, systemic or liver disease, immunosuppression, renal replacement therapy. CKD without anemia-inclusion criteria: over 18 years, no anemia or treatment for anemia, CKD with stable creatinine values three months before enrollment. Exclusion criteria: medical conditions known to have a role in the development of polycythemia. Hepcidin-25 and ferritin were measured by ELISA method. Erythropoietin (EPO), tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-6 were evaluated using chemiluminescent enzyme immunometric assays. Unpaired T test, Pearson correlation and multiple regression were used for statistical analysis.
Results: Hemoglobin values were significantly lower in anemia group. There were no differences in terms of eGFR, age, body mass index, serum hepcidin, erythropoietin, fibrinogen, IL-6, and TNF-α between CKD patients with and without anemia. Serum hepcidin correlated positively with ferritin (r=0.45 p<0.05), TNF-α (r=0.54, p<0.05) and negatively with erythropoietin (r=-0.51, p<0.05). Multiple linear regression analysis demonstrated that TNF-α is an independent predictor of serum hepcidin in our patients (p=0.003, R=0.71).
Conclusion: We found no differences in serum hepcidin, erythropoietin and inflammatory markers in non-dialysis CKD patients with and without anemia.