Biocompatibility and small protein permeability of hydrophilic-coated membrane dialyzer (NV) in hemodialysis patients: a pilot study

Abstract

Abstract Background We evaluated the biocompatibility and small protein permeability of a newly developed hydrophilic-coated membrane dialyzer (NV) compared with conventional polysulfone dialyzer (APS) for hemodialysis (HD) therapy. Methods In a prospective crossover study, 11 maintenance HD patients (7 males; mean age 67.0 ± 10.2 years) received HD three times a week for 4 weeks with the NV membrane and then for another 4 weeks with the APS membrane. We evaluated the variation in several parameters including white blood cell (WBC) count and fibrinogen as indexes for biocompatibility. The plasma and dialysate concentrations of β2-microglobulin (β2-M), α1-microglobulin (α1-M), and albumin were measured at baseline and after 4 h of each study treatment in order to assess the removal of small proteins. Results Reductions in the WBC count were seen with APS compared with NV at 60 min (NV 5.65 ± 1.60, APS 5.17 ± 1.65 × 103/μL, p < 0.05) and 240 min (NV 5.28 ± 1.38, APS 4.63 ± 1.2 × 103/μL, p < 0.005) after the start of HD. With NV, we found significantly greater rates of variation of β2-M (NV 45.5 ± 1.2, APS 40.1 ± 1.2%, p < 0.0001), α1-M (NV 41.2 ± 9.9, APS 34.2 ± 18.5%, p < 0.05), and albumin (NV 31.6 ± 7.8, APS 18.1 ± 6.5%, p < 0.0001) during HD than with APS. However, there were no significant differences in the removal of β2-M between the two dialyzers. Conclusions The clinical characteristics of NV may reveal an improved biocompatibility and a comparable efficiency in small protein removal as compared to those of APS. Trial registration Clinical effects of polysulfone membrane, NV-13U UMIN000011764

Keywords

• Hemodialysis
• Polysulfone
• Hydrophilic-coated membrane
• Biocompatibility
• Small protein permeability