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Iron stores available for hemoglobin synthesis have been determined in 11 male healthy volunteers and in 14 male blood donor volunteers by means of quantitative phlebotomy. The mobilizable iron stores in normal men averaged 750 mg with a range of 180–1 350 mg. The blood donors had significantly lower values with a mean of 110 mg and a range of 0–250 mg. The desferrioxamine (DF)-induced urinary iron excretion was found to be closely related to the available iron stores. The DF test could separate groups with different size of the iron stores. In subjects with iron deficiency and anemia the DF-induced urinary iron excretion was significantly lower than that of a group with depleted iron stores but no anemia. This indicates that DF derives a fraction of its iron from other sources than the iron stores. During reduction of the iron stores by phlebotomy there was a successive decrease in the urinary iron excretion induced by DF in most subjects studied. A diminution of the mean cell volume and Hb content of the red cells did not occur until the iron stores were almost depleted.

2is such a figure, illustrating the iron content of the tissues involved in the daily iron traffic. The erythrocytes have 1800 mg, bone marrow 300 mg, macrophages 600 mg, the figures for the major storage site, the liver, is not given. The numbers seem to be taken from a previous review article in N Engl J Med by Nancy Andrews. 3 We wonder about the health of this person with more iron in his iron stores (1900 mg) than in the blood,1800 mg. As one gram of haemoglobin contains 3,4 mg of iron, 1800 mg corresponds to 529 gram of haemoglobin. Let us assume that he has a total blood volume of 5,5 L as that found in normal Swedish men. 4,5 With a correction figure of 0.91 for the body/venous hematocrit ratio his hemoglobin will be 529/5.5×0,91=105,7 g/L. He is anemic! We previously performed vigorous phlebotomy studies to measure the iron stores in normal men. In one study 4 of 11 normal men the iron stores measured

The frequency of HLA-A3 and HLA-B14 antigens was found to be significantly (P = less than 0.0001) higher in a series of 50 unrelated and unselected Swedish patients with idiopathic hemochromatosis (IH) than in controls, being 66% and 32% for A3 and 22% and 2% for B14. The haplotype A3B14 was associated with the highest risk in this material (relative risk 23.4). One family with this haplotype was traced back to the end of the seventeenth century. The pattern of HLA antigens associated with IH in Sweden shows remarkable similarity to those reported from England and Brittany.