Figure 4.

Circulating iron parameters immediately after iron injection of erythropoietin-treated mice. Six-week old male C57BL/6 mice were injected intravenously with 10 U/g body weight human erythropoietin. Five hours later, mice were intravenously injected with either 2.5 μg/g body weight ferric citrate or an equimolar amount of citrate as sodium citrate. Mice were euthanized 5 min after this final injection and blood taken for analysis. Total serum iron (A), transferrin saturation (B), total iron binding capacity (C) and relative diferric transferrin levels (D) were determined for each group. The relative diferric transferrin levels represent the percentage of transferrin in the diferric form expressed as a proportion of the values in mice injected with sodium citrate but not with erythropoietin. The data represent the mean ± SEM with the number of mice in each group indicated in parentheses along the x-axis. Con: control mice that were injected with sodium citrate; Fe: mice that were injected with ferric citrate; No Epo: mice that were not injected with erythropoietin; Epo: mice that were injected with erythropoietin; Apo: apo-transferrin; Mono: monoferric transferrin; Di: diferric transferrin. ***P<0.005.