Hepcidin levels predict COVID-19 severity and mortality in a cohort of hospitalized italian patients

Hepcidin, the liver peptide hormone whose role is to regulate iron concentration in the blood stream, is at the crossroad between iron metabolism and inflammation, being positively regulated by iron itself and proinflammatory cytokines.

However, its role as potential biomarker of COVID-19 severity has only partially been explored. In this paper, we analyzed plasma hepcidin levels in a well-characterized cohort of 111 Italian COVID-19 patients admitted at San Raffaele University Hospital, in Milan. In this cohort, all patients are hypoferremic and hepcidin levels do not correlate with iron, instead hepcidin expression is mainly driven by inflammation and correlates with markers of lung function.