Hepcidin as a Predictor of Response to Epoetin Therapy in Anemic Cancer Patients

BACKGROUND: Hepcidin is thought to be the central reg-ulator of ironmetabolism. Iron deficiency is associated with low hepcidin concentrations, and anemia in pa-tients with cancer is associated with high concentra-tions of hepcidin. STUDY OBJECTIVES: Our main objective was to assess the potential role of hepcidin for predicting response to epoetin therapy in anemic cancer patients. We also aimed to identify a cutoff value for hepcidin as a poten-tial predictive marker for response to epoetin therapy. METHODS: Using data from 525 anemic cancer patients enrolled in 5 studies, we assessed serum hepcidin con-centrations in 408 of these patients at baseline and an-alyzed pooled data from the 408 patients. The analysis population was separated into 2 categories using