Bantu siderosis is the overload of iron primarily seen in South African people. It involves unusual iron deposits in the liver. It is said that several African people are liable to an augmented skill to absorb iron. Initially, this was said to be a cause of ungalvanised barrels utilized to keep home-made beer that led to augmented oxidation and augmented levels of iron in the beer. Additional researches show that only those individuals that drink this beer acquires an overload in iron and the same syndrome happened in the people of African descent. Because of this, researchers were led to discover the gene polymorphism in the gene for ferroportin that prompts several individuals of African descent to overload iron.

Bantu siderosis is classified as a “rare disease” according to the Office of Rare Diseases (ORD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which means that it affects not more than 200,000 individuals in the US population.

Iron deposits in liver Asymptomatic Liver cirrhosis Impaired liver function Liver is enlarged Iron deposits in spleen Iron deposits in bone marrow

The main complication of Bantu siderosis is liver cancer.