Relaxivities of human liver and spleen ferritin

Ferritin, the iron-storing protein of mammals, is known to darken T₂-weighted magnetic resonance images. This darkening can be used to noninvasively measure an organ's iron content. Significant discrepancies exist between T₂ data obtained with ferritin-containing tissues and with aqueous solutions of horse spleen ferritin (HSF). The NMR properties of stable human ferritin have never been studied in aqueous solutions. Relaxometry results on human liver and spleen ferritin are reported here, showing that the relaxation induced in aqueous solutions by human ferritins is comparable to that induced by HSF. As a consequence, the differences between ferritin-containing human tissues and ferritin solutions cannot be attributed to different NMR properties of human and horse ferritins, but probably to a clustering of the protein in vivo.