Obesity is a major global health problem and is associated with low-grade inflammation and,
in a number of cases, poor iron status. We speculated that the adipokine leptin might play a
role in regulating iron metabolism in the overweight population because it shares a number
of common biological features with IL-6, a major factor in the development of the anemia of
chronic disease via its stimulatory actions on the production and release of the iron
regulatory hormone hepcidin. To test this hypothesis, we exposed HuH7 human hepatoma …