Iron status in patients with pyruvate kinase deficiency: neonatal hyperferritinaemia associated with a novel frameshift deletion in the PKLR gene (p.Arg518fs), and low hepcidin to ferritin ratios

Pyruvate kinase (PK) deficiency is an iron-loading anaemia characterized by chronic haemolysis, ineffective erythropoiesis and a requirement for blood transfusion in most cases. We studied 11 patients from 10 unrelated families and found nine different disease-causing PKLR mutations. Two of these mutations - the point mutation c.878A>T (p.Asp293Val) and the frameshift deletion c.1553delG (p.(Arg518Leufs*12)) - have not been previously described in the literature. This frameshift deletion was associated with an unusually severe phenotype involving neonatal hyperferritinaemia that is not typical of PK deficiency. No disease-causing mutations in genes associated with haemochromatosis could be found. Inappropriately low levels of hepcidin with respect to iron loading were detected in all PK-deficient patients with increased ferritin, confirming the predominant effect of accelerated erythropoiesis on hepcidin production. Although the levels of a putative hepcidin suppressor, growth differentiation factor-15, were increased in PK-deficient patients, no negative correlation with hepcidin was found. This result indicates the existence of another as-yet unidentified erythroid regulator of hepcidin synthesis in PK deficiency.