Hepcidin for controlling polycythemia?

[Mprtz]

The biggest challenge in TRT for me has been keeping my HCT down.

I've donated blood (and platelets) to the point of iron deficiency and hit the FDA red-cell loss limit.
I've tried to limit my donations to platelets only, but when my HCT hit 55 recently I caved and added a whole blood donation.

I've been thinking about other ways to help address this.

Since hepcidin suppression seems to be the mechanism by which androgens raise hematocrit, it seems like supplementing hepcidin could be of help.

I won't post a link, but there is at least one company offering hepcidin peptide for research use. I'm not about to jump into this, but I'm wondering if anyone else has done any research along these lines?

One problem is that there does not seem to be an FDA approved assay for hepcidin.

I could see hepcidin being compounded with testosterone for TRT and possibly reducing or eliminating one of the main undesirable side effects. Thoughts?

 

[Virginian]

I could be wrong, but I suspect donating platelets only does nothing to lower hemocrit.

 

[Mprtz]

I could be wrong, but I suspect donating platelets only does nothing to lower hemocrit.

There have been a number of threads on this and I had the same initial reaction.

Turns out that the apheresis process ruptures a lot of RBCs (hemolysis), resulting in a drop of HCT similar to donating a pint of whole.
When the RBCs rupture, they release their cell plasma into the bloodstream and the iron can be recaptured by the liver.

 

[Megatron28]

The biggest challenge in TRT for me has been keeping my HCT down.

I've donated blood (and platelets) to the point of iron deficiency and hit the FDA red-cell loss limit.
I've tried to limit my donations to platelets only, but when my HCT hit 55 recently I caved and added a whole blood donation.

I've been thinking about other ways to help address this.

Since hepcidin suppression seems to be the mechanism by which androgens raise hematocrit, it seems like supplementing hepcidin could be of help.

I won't post a link, but there is at least one company offering hepcidin peptide for research use. I'm not about to jump into this, but I'm wondering if anyone else has done any research along these lines?

One problem is that there does not seem to be an FDA approved assay for hepcidin.

I could see hepcidin being compounded with testosterone for TRT and possibly reducing or eliminating one of the main undesirable side effects. Thoughts?

I don't know anything about this but it sounds intriguing.