 Conversely, it is suggested that states of low dietary intake and low iron stores induce up-regulation of DMT1 as well as Ireg1 and hephaestin, thus simultaneously increasing the enterocyte's capacity for dietary iron uptake on the basolateral surface and export into the circulation on the apical surface.Hephaestin has not yet been linked to a human disease.However, when the protein was ablated in murine models, both intestine-specific and whole-body hephaestin knockout (KO) strains exhibited similarly severe accumulation of iron in the duodenal enterocytes and suffered from microcytic, hypochromic anemia, indicative of systemic iron deficiency.