Review Question - QID 109729

A 53-year-old woman comes to see her primary care physician because she has had fever and malaise for two days. She was in her usual state of health until three days ago when she began to feel tired in the evening and decided to go to bed early. The next day she developed a fever, productive cough, chills, and malaise. She is otherwise healthy with no chronic conditions and lives by herself with two cats. She smokes one pack of cigarettes per day and drinks alcohol socially. On physical exam, she is found to have increased dullness to percussion at the lung bases and blood work is obtained showing elevated levels of C-reactive protein and hepcidin. The signal responsible for the elevated levels of these proteins was most likely secreted by which of the following cells?