Chronic iron overload has slow and insidious effects on heart, liver, and other organs.
Because iron-driven oxidation of most biologic materials (such as lipids and proteins) is
readily repaired, this slow progression of organ damage implies some kind of biological"
memory." We hypothesized that cumulative iron-catalyzed oxidant damage to mtDNA might
occur in iron overload, perhaps explaining the often lethal cardiac dysfunction. Real time
PCR was used to examine the" intactness" of mttDNA in cultured H9c2 rat cardiac myocytes …