Abstract
Summary
Parabiotic rats have been employed in an attempt to determine if hypoxia can enhance intestinal iron absorption by a humoral effect. The mean absorption of iron by rats whose partners were exposed to hypoxia was significantly greater than that of rats whose partners were normally oxygenated (0.025p<0.05). Additional experiments using bilaterally nephrectomized rats exposed to hypoxia indicated that (i) bilaterally nephrectomized rats absorbed less iron than sham-operated controls; (ii) hypoxia increased the absorption of iron in bilaterally nephrectomized animals over that of nephrectomized rats that were normally oxygenated; and (iii) this enhanced absorption of iron by the bilaterally nephrectomized rats was not associated with increased erythropoiesis. If one assumes that what applies in the single animal also holds for the parabiotic pair and vice versa, the results of these experiments suggests that intestinal iron absorption may be mediated by a transferable humoral factor that is not erythropoietin.
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