Comment to: Hepcidin: from discovery to differential diagnosis. Haematologica 2008; 93:90-7.

2is such a figure, illustrating the iron content of the tissues involved in the daily iron traffic. The erythrocytes have 1800 mg, bone marrow 300 mg, macrophages 600 mg, the figures for the major storage site, the liver, is not given. The numbers seem to be taken from a previous review article in N Engl J Med by Nancy Andrews. 3 We wonder about the health of this person with more iron in his iron stores (1900 mg) than in the blood,1800 mg. As one gram of haemoglobin contains 3,4 mg of iron, 1800 mg corresponds to 529 gram of haemoglobin. Let us assume that he has a total blood volume of 5,5 L as that found in normal Swedish men. 4,5 With a correction figure of 0.91 for the body/venous hematocrit ratio his hemoglobin will be 529/5.5×0,91=105,7 g/L. He is anemic! We previously performed vigorous phlebotomy studies to measure the iron stores in normal men. In one study 4 of 11 normal men the iron stores measured