Iron absorption

Overview

The duodenum is the first part of the intestines. It is located right after the stomach, and is usually 250mm long.
This model simulates the behaviour of a hemochromatosis suffering person's duodenum. We use it to compute the quantity of iron absorbed by the organism. Once our genetically modified bacteria are released in the duodenum, they produce siderophores to chelate the solved iron, thus making it unavailable for intestinal absorption. Then, they eventually flush out of the duodenum. The main hypothesis in this model is that the bacteria don't colonize the duodenum : they only flow through.
The goal of this model is to measure how efficient could this form of treatment be. Because too much parameters remain unknown, it is a theoretical simulation which will not give any numerical results.

Assumptions

• Our bacteria don't settle in the duodenum
• No regulation in the patient's iron absorption
• Constant iron flow
• Homogeneous fluid
• The bacterial quantity is constant
• The bacterial natural absorption is insignificant compared to the chelation

Model Description

A : Total quantity of iron absorbed by the duodenum (mol)
S : Quantity of solved iron (mol)
P : Total quantity of enterobactin produced by our population of bacteria (mol)
Q : Total quantity of chelated iron (mol)
N : Number of bacteria

Results

The following graph is a simulation without any bacteria:
The purple line represents 50% of the total ingested iron, whereas the green line is set at 10%, which is the iron absorption of a sane individual.

Bacterial intake before meal	Bacterial intake during meal

Conclusion

It is possible to reduce intestinal iron intake up to 50% if the patient takes one pill during each meal. This means that the patient would endure a lighter treatment : less bloodletting for people suffering from hemochromatosis, and less iron chelator's side effects for the thalassemia.