Expression profiles of iron transporter in human duodenal biopsies from control, IDA, ACD, and ACD/IDA patients. Duodenal biopsies were snap-frozen in liquid nitrogen and RNA was prepared, followed by reverse transcription and quantitative TaqMan PCR for ferroportin (A) and DMT-1 (B) mRNA expression. Values were normalized to the mRNA expression levels of the housekeeping gene β-actin. (C) Duodenal biopsies of control (i), IDA (ii), ACD (iii), and ACD/IDA (iv) patients were subjected to immunohistochemistry using an affinity-purified antiferroportin antibody. A representative slide for each parameter measured is shown. ↑ indicates the basolateral ferroportin expression. The images were captured by an Olympus BX51 microscope (Plan FL40× /0.75; Olympus) using a ProgResC12 plus camera (Jenoptik) and ProgResCapturePro2.5 software. In addition, the corresponding hemoglobin, serum IL-6, serum ferritin concentrations, and serum hepcidin levels are shown. n.d. indicates not detectable. Figure 1 contains details on graphs and statistics.