Identification of three mechanistic pathways for iron-deficient heart failure

Abstract

Current understanding of iron-deficient heart failure is based on blood tests that are thought to reflect systemic iron stores, but the available evidence suggests greater complexity. The entry and egress of circulating iron is controlled by erythroblasts, which (in severe iron deficiency) will sacrifice erythropoiesis to supply iron to other organs, e.g. the heart. Marked hypoferraemia (typically with anaemia) can drive the depletion of cardiomyocyte iron, impairing contractile performance and explaining why a transferrin saturation < ≈15%-16% predicts the ability of intravenous iron to reduce the risk of major heart failure events in long-term trials (Type 1 iron-deficient heart failure). However, heart failure may be accompanied by intracellular iron depletion within skeletal muscle and cardiomyocytes, which is disproportionate to the findings of systemic iron biomarkers. Inflammation- and deconditioning-mediated skeletal muscle dysfunction - a primary cause of dyspnoea and exercise intolerance in patients with heart failure - is accompanied by intracellular skeletal myocyte iron depletion, which can be exacerbated by even mild hypoferraemia, explaining why symptoms and functional capacity improve following intravenous iron, regardless of baseline haemoglobin or changes in haemoglobin (Type 2 iron-deficient heart failure). Additionally, patients with advanced heart failure show myocardial iron depletion due to both diminished entry into and enhanced egress of iron from the myocardium; the changes in iron proteins in the cardiomyocytes of these patients are opposite to those expected from systemic iron deficiency. Nevertheless, iron supplementation can prevent ventricular remodelling and cardiomyopathy produced by experimental injury in the absence of systemic iron deficiency (Type 3 iron-deficient heart failure). These observations, taken collectively, support the possibility of three different mechanistic pathways for the development of iron-deficient heart failure: one that is driven through systemic iron depletion and impaired erythropoiesis and two that are characterized by disproportionate depletion of intracellular iron in skeletal and cardiac muscle. These mechanisms are not mutually exclusive, and all pathways may be operative at the same time or may occur sequentially in the same patients.