Iron regulates the TLR4 inflammatory signalling pathway

Iron is a micronutrient essential to the survival of both humans and disease-causing microbes. Changes in iron levels therefore affect the severity of infectious diseases. For example, individuals with mutations in their HFE gene have exceedingly high levels of iron in their liver and are more susceptible to infection with a number of microbes. Exactly how changes in iron levels affect susceptibility to infectious disease has not been clearly determined, although it has been observed that mice lacking Hfe mount an impaired inflammatory response following oral infection with the bacterium that causes salmonella...

Read the whole article on

More from