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

BackgroundWe 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.MethodsIn 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.ResultsReductions 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