Hepcidin-20

Where it comes from

Made in

Cut from hepcidin-25; also made by the kidney tubule

Sent out by

Accumulates in kidney failure

Acts on

• Ferroportin (barely)
• Microbes

What it does

• Does not block ferroportin to any useful degree, having lost the five residues that do the work ¹
• Antimicrobial and antifungal in the laboratory, which is the activity the hepcidin family was named for
• A fragment rather than a hormone, and the most abundant of the short forms in the urine of patients with kidney disease ²

In medicine

• No use of its own, beyond being a reason that a hepcidin assay must be specific for hepcidin-25 ²
• It rises in kidney failure, so a non-specific assay reads those patients as having more active hormone than they do ¹

Beyond the body’s own use

• Not studied as a treatment for iron disorders, where the point is to act on ferroportin more strongly rather than less
• Its antimicrobial side is the part still asked about: whether the body trims hepcidin to turn an iron hormone into a local antibiotic, which would make the fragment a product rather than a leftover. No experiment has settled it ¹