Figure 7.

Erfe expression and spleen weight 4 hours after iron injection in 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 4 h after this final injection and various tissues were taken for analysis. Splenic Erfe expression (A, B), bone marrow Erfe expression (C, D) and spleen weight (E) were determined for each group. Gene expression levels were calculated relative to either the general housekeeping gene Hprt or the erythroid-specific marker Gypa and are 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 injected with sodium citrate; Fe: mice injected with ferric citrate; No Epo: mice that were not injected with erythropoietin; Epo: mice that were injected with erythropoietin. *P<0.05; ***P<0.005.