ALUMINUM REMOVAL WITH A HEMOPERFUSION COL UMN CONTAINING DESFERRIOXAMINE

Desferrioxamine (DFO) has been shown to be useful in the treatment of aluminium toxicity. However this compound is not free of toxic effects . The use of a haemoperfusion column containing desferrioxamine trappe d in the cartridge looks theorically atractive as it would be unnecess ary to infuse DFO into patients to remove aluminium. In the present st udy we evaluated the aluminium removal using this device. We simulated a dialysis perfusing the haemoperfusion column containing DFO with pl asma in biological conditions (37-degrees-C, pH 7.38-7.40) with a know n concentration of aluminium using two different flows (60 and 120 ml/ min). We also carried out a blank experiment with the same flows and t ime of recirculation with no cartridge. Serum aluminium was measured b efore and after 30, 60, 90 and 105 minutes of recirculation. The resul ts show that the serum aluminium did not decrease using the haemoperfu sion column containing DFO. On the contrary, the final serum aluminium increased in all the experiments (n = 8) and there was no change in t he blank experiment (n = 3). The aluminium content of the cartridge wa s investigated finding 691.76 mug/g of aluminium. Our results demonstr ated this haemoperfusion column containing DFO did not extract alumini um from plasma. On the contrary it seems to release aluminium probably due to the its high aluminium content and to the high affinity of pla sma proteins for aluminium.