Awareness of environmental and behavioral methods that can prevent iron loading plus development of pharmaceutical agents that can block microbial access to iron may help to reduce our dependence on antibiotics.
In the contest between the establishment of a bacterial or mycotic disease and the successful suppression of the disease by animal hosts, iron is the cation whose concentration ... at present appears to be most important. (199) Vulnerability to infection based on the individual's state of iron nutrition must be the net result of the effect of iron or the lack of it on microbial growth on the one hand and the host immune response on the other. (49) The widespread notion that better than average nutrition leads to better than average resistance to infection appears to be a misconception. (91)
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