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Starving Infections Of Iron To Beat Back Disease

by — 2015-09-08 in Nutrition & Dieting
It's easy to forget that bacteria and viruses need food, too, and when they infect us, we are it. Depriving bacterial and viral pathogens of iron, German scientists have discovered, is one of the ways the body beats infections.

Before Americans became hooked on television series like Top Chef and Chopped, back in the era when obesity was a relatively rare phenomenon, American popular culture focused on a different kind of nutritional obsession, iron. Everybody was assumed to be deficient in iron. Everybody was assumed to need the pick-me-up of an astonishingly popular product called Geritol.

The basic ingredients in Geritol were beverage alcohol, which contributed to its popularity, and iron in the form of ferric ammonium citrate. The product also contained some B vitamins. Playing on another American cultural fixation, mothers making their children eat liver to get the iron in it, Geritol's slogan was "twice the iron in a pound of calf's liver." Each daily dose of the product contained 50 to 100 mg of elemental iron, about 12 times the amount required by an adult and nine times the amount required by a teenager. 

Geritol claimed to cure iron-deficiency anemia, and stayed in front of the public by sponsoring, in an era when families could only get a few channels on aerial television, wildly popular programs such as The Lawrence Welk Show and Ted Mack's Original Comedy Hour, as well as a mostly-ignored but now well-known television series, the original Star Trek. 

The makers of Geritol were taken to court by the US Federal Trade Commission in 1959. Court battles continued for 14 years, in which the government established that the company made claims that were "excessive to the point of being reckless." Once one of the best known brands of consumer products in the USA, Geritol largely disappeared from the market in the 1980's.

Does Everyone Need Supplemental Iron Today?

There is no doubt that everyone needs iron. Every cell in the human body depends on oxygen brought to it by the iron-bound proteins myoglobin and hemoglobin. Iron acts as a pro-oxidant, helping the immune system generate hydrogen peroxide to dissolve invading pathogenic organisms. 
 
Every cell in the body uses iron to make the energy storage molecule ATP, iron is critical to the process of sensing low oxygen levels, and liver enzymes that detoxify harmful substances depend on the action of iron.
 
There is also no doubt that most people do not need supplemental iron. In countries where most people eat red meat, about 4 to 8 percent of women who have not yet reached menopause are deficient in iron. In countries where the diet is vegetarian or vegan, up to 50 percent of the population, both male and female, is iron-deficient. For the majority of people, however, the problem is too much iron, not too little.

The Problem Of Too Much Iron

In the United States and Canada, everyday foods such as bread, cereals, and anything made with wheat flour are fortified with iron. The result is that many North Americans get too much iron. Excessive iron levels interfere with liver enzymes. They increase insulin resistance, the driving force behind weight gain and type 2 diabetes. They lead to skin problems and increase the risk of liver cancer. It is also important to understand that iron is not just an essential nutrient for humans. It is also food for the microorganisms that cause infections.

Iron Regulators to Fight Infection

Pathogens such as bacteria, protozoa, and viruses need iron to multiply. They hijack iron from their human hosts through a variety of methods. Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Salmonella species generate complex siderophores. These proteins lock onto iron, pulling it out of the bloodstream into the germ. The common infectious bacteriumStaphylococcus aureus  acquires iron from the human body by secreting toxins. These toxins break down human cells so the staph bacteria can consume the iron they release. 
 
Most of the human body's iron is found in red blood cells, so infectious bacteria focus on breaking down red blood cells to get their iron. The result of red blood cell destruction is the fatigue that we can feel when he have an infection. The body's defense system against these kinds of infections makes the problem even worse.
 
 
When the immune system senses infection, it sends out a signal that shuts down the production of a protein called hepcidin in the digestive tract. Without hepcidin, the human body cannot absorb iron from food. 
 
Over a period of a few months, the body is able slowly to starve an infection, but at the cost of starving itself, creating a condition known as iron-deficiency anemia. If someone treats the anemia before the immune system has Vanquished the disease, the infection comes back even stronger, setting off a new cycle of infection, iron depletion, iron repletion, and even worse infection. In the laboratory, giving lab rats that had  E coli sepsis increased the mortality rate to 60 percent.
 
The solution to low iron levels, therefore, is not always to take supplemental iron. However, iron deficiencies can also cause serious or even fatal disease. To combat this problem, a team of researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany have been developing iron regulators to keep bacteria from absorbing iron from their hosts. These complex proteins work with the human immune system to fight infection. They stimulate the pathogen-fighting white blood cells known as macrophages, which can engulf and digest bacteria and protozoans, to release a compound called lipocalin 2, which blocks the entry of iron into the microbe. In a laboratory study with mice, the German scientists found that giving an iron regulator blocked the growth of Salmonella infection so that mice did not get as sick.
Iron regulators aren't going to be available at your local pharmacy any time soon, but the basic science of iron and infectious disease offers some pointers that can help you beat your next infection.
  • It's important to stop taking iron supplements while you have a urinary tract infection (UTI), cellulitis, acne, boils, carbuncles, or even acne. The iron feeds the germs that you are trying to control. Wait until you get your infection under control before you resume taking an iron supplement. If you are on a prescribed iron supplement, ask your doctor whether you should continue it if you have an infection.
  • It's important, if you live in the United States or Canada, to avoid commercial non-organic breads, breakfast cereals, prepackaged desserts, cake mixes, and other products made with wheat flour when you have an infection. Actually, it is a good idea to avoid them all the time, but it is especially important to avoid them when you have an infection because of the added iron they contain.
  • If you have a hereditary condition called hemochromatosis (hereditary iron overload disease), you need to be especially careful with any infection. This is doubly true if you have diabetes. The combination of iron and sugar is exactly what bacteria need to grow rapidly, sometimes so rapidly that you can get very sick very fast.

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