Hepcidin
Shop HepcidinAlso called: Hepcidin-25 (human), Hepcidin Protein (BSA), Hepcidin 25
Hepcidin is a tiny protein, called a peptide hormone, that your body makes in the liver. It acts like a gatekeeper for iron, a mineral your blood and muscles need to work. Doctors and scientists study it because it controls how much iron moves around in the body. It is not a supplement people take; it is something made inside the body and measured in lab tests.
Hepcidin works by blocking a doorway on cells called ferroportin. When hepcidin levels go up, it attaches to this doorway and makes the cell pull it inside and break it down. That stops iron from leaving the gut, where food iron is absorbed, and from leaving storage spots where old red blood cells are recycled. The liver makes more hepcidin when the body has plenty of iron or when there is swelling from illness or infection.
It makes less when the body needs to build new red blood cells. Scientists can measure hepcidin in blood samples with special lab tests. High hepcidin can mean iron gets trapped in the body, which can make anemia from long-term illness harder to treat and can make iron pills less helpful. Too little hepcidin can lead to iron building up and damaging organs. Researchers are still learning the best ways to use hepcidin tests in everyday medicine, and no hepcidin medicine is approved yet.
Benefits
What Hepcidin Helps With
The benefits people report — backed by research.
Renal & hepatic (3)
More reported benefits (5)
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Evidence
Research Citations (3)
Every claim above traces back to a source you can check — here are 3 of them.
- Source
Evaluation of Hepcidin Level in COVID-19 Patients Admitted to the Intensive Care Unit.
2022 95/100Rated 95/100Source typePeer-reviewed studyIndependent sourcesstill being verifiedEvery claim links to the page it came from, and stronger sources rate higher. Full methodology → - Source
Chronic hepcidin induction causes hyposideremia and alters the pattern of cellular iron accumulation in hemochromatotic mice.
95/100Rated 95/100Source typePeer-reviewed studyIndependent sourcesstill being verifiedEvery claim links to the page it came from, and stronger sources rate higher. Full methodology → - Source
The solution structure of human hepcidin, a peptide hormone with antimicrobial activity that is involved in iron uptake and hereditary hemochromatosis
95/100Rated 95/100Source typePeer-reviewed studyIndependent sourcesstill being verifiedEvery claim links to the page it came from, and stronger sources rate higher. Full methodology →
Timeline
History & Milestones
Key moments in Hepcidin’s research and regulatory timeline — sourced and dated.
- Evaluation of Hepcidin Level in COVID-19 Patients Admitted to the Intensive Care UnitPublicationNov 2, 2022Related:Hepcidin
News
Latest on Hepcidin
Dated, sourced reporting that mentions Hepcidin.
Mimrylo snags FDA approval for first-of-its-kind polycythemia vera treatment
The FDA approved rusfertide (Mimrylo, from Protagonist Therapeutics and Takeda) for erythrocytosis in adults with polycythemia vera who haven't achieved adequate control on other treatments. The approval rests on the phase 3 VERIFY trial, where 76.9% of rusfertide patients needed no phlebotomy between weeks 20 and 32 versus 32.9% on placebo. Dosing is weekly subcutaneous injection starting at 19 mg. Rusfertide is a hepcidin mimetic — the connection to the iron-regulatory peptide named in the companion research review; this article itself focuses on clinical results, dosing, and safety warnings.
Hepcidin and Iron in Health and Disease
This review describes hepcidin as the iron-regulatory hormone, a 25-amino-acid peptide made by hepatocytes that controls plasma iron by regulating the exporter ferroportin. Hepcidin rises with iron loading and inflammation (via IL-6) and falls with erythropoietic drive and in pregnancy. Deficiency causes iron overload in hemochromatosis and iron-loading anemias, while excess drives iron-restrictive anemias; the authors note hepcidin-targeted agonist/antagonist therapeutics — naming rusfertide and VIT-2763 — as the emerging treatment frontier.
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