Iron in Parkinson disease, blood diseases, malaria and ferritin

The concentration of iron in Substantia nigra, the part of the brain which is involved in Parkinson disease, has been found by Mössbauer spectroscopy (MS) to be ∼ 160 μg/g wet tissue and ∼ 670 μg/g dry weight, both in control and Parkinson samples. All the iron observed by MS in these samples is ferritin-like iron. In several blood diseases, large amounts of ferritin-like iron have been observed in red blood cells. Desferral removed iron from serum, but not from red blood cells. The iron compound in the malarial pigment of human blood infected by P. falciparum was found to be hemin-like, whereas the pigment iron in rats infected by P. berghei was different from any known iron porphyrin.