Iron Deficiency and Overload
Nutrition and Health Series, 2010, Part 2, 95-123

Iron Deficiency and Excess in the Brain: Implications for Cognitive
Impairment and Neurodegeneration
Moussa B.H. Youdim, Manfred Gerlach and Peder Riederer
Abstract
• Iron is a two-way sword. Either its brain iron deficiency (ID) or
excess profoundly affects brain function.
• ID can result in reduction of brain iron by roughly 35% as contrast
to a 90% depletion in the liver. Thus it is tightly controlled. It is
associated with impairment of cognition and learning processes which
may result from alteration in dopaminergic, at the level of its
receptor subsensitivity, and increased opiate neurotransmission. Other
aminergic systems are not profoundly affected...


...• One of the major findings on brain iron metabolism is its
accumulation at neuronal sites which degenerate and give rise to
neurodegenerative disorders ... Some are familial disorders, with
mutation of genes involved in iron metabolism..
• The role of iron and its accumulation in substantia nigra pars
compacta ... has indicated that iron participates in the
Fenton reaction to induce oxidative stress-dependent damage to the
neurons...
.
...• It is apparent that iron accumulation may have a pivotal role in the
degeneration of dopamine neurons in Parkinson’s disease. Future
studies must illuminate why the process of neurodegeneration results
in iron deposition and from where it is transported when it has
limited access across the blood–brain barrier.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r306688xn2211403/
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(author's research at Oxford Univ led to development of rasagiline)