Dietary Magnesium Supplementation Ameliorates Anemia in a Mouse Model of 
-Thalassemia
Lucia De Franceschi,
Carlo Brugnara, and
Yves Beuzard
From the Department of Internal Medicine, University of Verona, Verona, Italy; Department of Laboratory Medicine, The Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; and Experimental Laboratory of Gene Therapy, Hopital St Louis, Paris, France.
To ascertain the quantitative effect on the disease 
-thalassemia of a low-magnesium (Mg) diet compared with a high-Mg diet and a standard-Mg diet, we studied the effect these diets had over a 4-week period on -thalassemic ( thal) mice compared with normal C57BL/6 mice used as controls. The low-Mg diet consisted of 6 ± 2 mg Mg/kg body weight/d, the high-Mg diet 1,000 ± 20 mg Mg/kg body weight/d, and the standard-Mg diet 400 ± 20 mg Mg/kg body weight/d. thal mice that were fed the low-Mg diet became more anemic, had reduced serum and erythrocyte Mg, and had decreased erythrocyte K. Their K-Cl cotransport increased, followed by commensurate cell dehydration. The high-Mg group showed a significant improvement of the anemia, increased serum and erythrocyte Mg, increased erythrocyte Mg, increased erythrocyte K, reduced K-Cl cotransport, and diminished cell dehydration. C57BL/6 control mice that received the low-Mg diet experienced anemia with erythrocyte dehydration, whereas the high-Mg diet had little effect on the hematologic parameters. thal and C57BL/6 control mice that were fed a standard diet showed no changes. These results indicate that dietary Mg supplementation corrects hypomagnesemia and improves anemia in murine thal and should be assessed in human -thalassemia.
Blood, Vol. 90 No. 3 (August 1), 1997:
pp. 1283-1290
© 1997 by The American Society of Hematology.
