Skeletal muscle ferritin abundance is tightly related to plasma ferritin concentration in adults with obesity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
New Findings What is the central question of this study? Obesity is associated with complex perturbations to iron homeostasis: is plasma ferritin concentration (a biomarker of whole‐body iron stores) related to the abundance of ferritin (the key tissue iron storage protein) in skeletal muscle in adults with obesity? What is the main finding and its importance? Plasma ferritin concentration was tightly correlated with the abundance of ferritin in skeletal muscle, and this relationship persisted when accounting for sex, age, body mass index and plasma C‐reactive protein concentration. Our findings suggest that skeletal muscle may be an important iron store. Abstract Obesity is associated with complex perturbations to whole‐body and tissue iron homeostasis. Recent evidence suggests a potentially important influence of iron storage in skeletal muscle on whole‐body iron homeostasis, but this association is not clearly resolved. The primary aim of this study was to assess the relationship between whole‐body and skeletal muscle iron stores by measuring the abundance of the key iron storage (ferritin) and import (transferrin receptor) proteins in skeletal muscle, as well as markers of whole‐body iron homeostasis in men (n = 19) and women (n = 43) with obesity. Plasma ferritin concentration (a marker of whole‐body iron stores) was highly correlated with muscle ferritin abundance (r = 0.77, P = 2 × 10−13) and negatively associated with muscle transferrin receptor abundance (r = −0.76, P = 1 × 10−12). These relationships persisted when accounting for sex, age, BMI and plasma C‐reactive protein concentration. In parallel with higher whole‐body iron stores in our male versus female participants, men had 2.2‐fold higher muscle ferritin abundance (P = 1 × 10−4) compared with women. In accordance with lower muscle iron storage, women had 2.7‐fold higher transferrin receptor abundance (P = 7 × 10−10) compared with men. We conclude that muscle iron storage and import proteins are tightly and independently related to plasma ferritin concentration in adults with obesity, suggesting that skeletal muscle may be an underappreciated iron store.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".