VIDEO: Understanding the role of inflammation in anemia

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It is difficult for me to speak to specialties other than my own. But I think a common denominator that I've already alluded to many times that kind of transcends specialty is the role of inflammation in anemia. And this is something, as I said, that we really didn't understand very well before the year 2000 when hepcidin was first discovered. And now we realize that this, as I said, applies to many, many patient populations and other specialties that have that kind of common denominator of inflammation. So rheumatology patients with rheumatoid arthritis, et cetera, cardiology patients with heart failure. You know, I'm going to make an exception for hematology patients because they have all kinds of different reasons to have anemia. But there are lots of specialties. GI patients with inflammatory bowel disease who may not necessarily be bleeding, but still have that inflammatory state in their bowel that contributes to the high hepcidin levels and resistance to oral iron therapy and their endogenous erythropoietin. So I think the understanding of inflammation across specialties, the very important role for intravenous iron among those patients who have what we call this functional iron deficiency, very, very common across many specialties.

And as I may have mentioned, the pipeline of drugs that are being explored to down-regulate hepcidin or decrease its efficacy, its effect on iron dysregulation, if we will, is not only coming in the nephrology space, it's coming in a lot of other spaces, a lot of subspecialties where that issue of inflammation contributing to anemia seems to be playing the greatest role. So if I had to pick one, again, common denominator of anemia across specialties, it would be the issue of inflammation, functional iron deficiency. And what tools do we have to try to overcome that functional iron deficiency, getting more iron to the bone marrow that will support red blood cell production.