About the Authors

Coby M. M. Laarakkers

Affiliations Laboratory of Genetic, Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, Hepcidinanalysis.com, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Erwin T. Wiegerinck

Affiliations Laboratory of Genetic, Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, Hepcidinanalysis.com, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Siem Klaver

Affiliations Laboratory of Genetic, Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, Hepcidinanalysis.com, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Maria Kolodziejczyk

Affiliation Pieris AG, Freising, Germany

Hendrik Gille

Affiliation Pieris AG, Freising, Germany

Andreas M. Hohlbaum

Affiliation Pieris AG, Freising, Germany

Harold Tjalsma

Contributed equally to this work with: Harold Tjalsma, Dorine W. Swinkels

Affiliations Laboratory of Genetic, Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, Hepcidinanalysis.com, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Dorine W. Swinkels

Contributed equally to this work with: Harold Tjalsma, Dorine W. Swinkels

d.swinkels@labgk.umcn.nl

Affiliations Laboratory of Genetic, Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, Hepcidinanalysis.com, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Competing Interests

CMML, ETW, SK, HT and DWS are employees of the Radboud University Medical Centre (Nijmegen, The Netherlands) that amongst others offers hepcidin measurements to the medical scientific and pharmaceutical communities through a service unit called “hepcidinanalysis.com” on a fee per sample basis. MK, HG and AMH are employees of Pieris AG (Freising, Germany), an independent, clinical stage biotechnology company advancing its proprietary Anticalin technology to create safer, more efficacious and more convenient protein therapeutics. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: CMML HT DWS. Performed the experiments: CMML ETW SK MK. Analyzed the data: CMML ETW SK HT DWS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: HG AMH HT DWS. Wrote the paper: CMML HG AMH HT DWS.