Iron Oversupplementation Causes Hippocampal Iron Overloading and Impairs Social Novelty Recognition in Nursing Piglets

Background: Iron oversupplementation in healthy term infants may adversely affect growth and cognitive development.

Objective: We hypothesized that early-life iron excess causes systemic and central nervous system iron overload, and compromises social behavior.

Methods: The nursing pig was used as a translational model in a completely randomized study. On postnatal day (PD) 1, 24 pigs (1.57 ± 0.28 kg mean ± standard deviation body wt) were assigned to the following treatment groups: 1) nonsupplemented iron-deficient group (NON); 2) control group (CON), intramuscularly injected with iron dextran (100 mg Fe) on PD2; 3) moderate iron group (MOD), orally administered ferrous sulfate at 10 mg Fe · kg body wt-1 · d-1; and 4) high iron group (HIG), orally administered ferrous sulfate at 50 mg Fe · kg-1 · d-1. Piglets were nursed by sows during the study from PD1 to PD21. Tissue iron was analyzed by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Messenger RNA and protein expression of iron regulator and transporters were analyzed by quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction and Western blot. A sociability test was performed on PD19-20.

Results: Both MOD and HIG treatments (5.51 and 9.85 µmol/g tissue), but not CON (0.54 µmol/g), increased hepatic iron as compared with NON (0.25 µmol/g, P < 0.05). Similarly, the hippocampal iron concentrations in the MOD and HIG groups were 14.9% and 31.8% higher than that of NON, respectively (P < 0.05). In comparison with NON, MOD and HIG treatment repressed DMT1 in duodenal mucosa by 4- and 46-fold, respectively (P < 0.05); HIG drastically induced HAMP in liver by 540-fold (P < 0.05); iron-supplemented groups reduced TFRC in the hippocampus by <1-fold (P < 0.05). However, duodenal expression of ferroportin, the predominant transporter in basal membrane, was not affected by treatment. Despite normal sociability, the MOD and HIG pigs displayed deficits in social novelty recognition (P = 0.004).

Conclusions: Duodenal ferroportin was hyporesponsive to iron excess (MOD and HIG), which caused hippocampal iron overload and impaired social novelty recognition in nursing pigs.