[Iron Metabolism and Iron Therapy in Chronic Renal Failure]

Iron therapy in nephropathic patients can allow optimizing treatment with EPO identifying the minimum effective dose capable of improving the patient's quality of life. The most recent studies on iron metabolism and on the interference of iron deficiency syndrome on the performance of some organs, in particular the myocardium, suggest the need to intervene very early, especially in patients with cardiomyopathy and systolic deficit. Setting up an iron therapy in nephropathic patients requires a correct diagnosis. That is particularly difficult in comorbid and inflamed patients because of the poor diagnostic reliability of the main biomarkers (ferritin and transferrin saturation). We need to spread the use of biomarkers that are not influenced by the inflammatory state, not expensive and easily accessible: reticulocyte hemoglobin could meet these requirements. The Pivotal study has delineated the optimal iron treatment in incident hemodialysis patients, treated with EPO not inflamed with classical biomarkers. It is yet to be determined, however, whether the Pivotal results are reproducible in more comorbid patients, also considering new and different therapeutic scenarios that the use of hypoxia-inducible factor-prolyl hydroxyl inhibitors may determine.