INTRODUCTION Mechanisms of water flow across the peritoneal membrane include diffusion, convection, and reabsorption. OBJECTIVES To understand these processes more clearly we have developed a method to measure transport of water across the peritoneal membrane. METHODS An artificial gradient of deuterated water (HDO) between blood and dialysate compartments was created in five subjects who t...

BACKGROUND The degree to which the dialysate prescription and, in particular, the dialysate sodium concentration influences blood pressure and interdialytic weight gain (IDWG) via changes in sodium flux, plasma volume or the other parameters is not well understood. The aim of the study was to investigate whether dialysis patients will have some beneficial effects of dialysate sodium set up acco...

BACKGROUND Membranes with increasing pore size are introduced to enhance removal of large uremic toxins with regular hemodialysis. These membranes might theoretically have higher permeability for bacterial degradation products. In this paper, permeability for bacterial degradation products of membranes of comparable composition with different pore size was investigated with a new in vitro set-u...

Ethanol, like other substances of abuse, preferentially increases dopamine (DA) transmission in the rat nucleus accumbens (NAc) following passive administration. It remains unclear, however, whether ethanol also increases NAc DA transmission following operant oral self-administration (SA). The NAc is made-up of a ventro-medial compartment, the shell and a dorso-lateral one, the core, where DA t...

The first objective of this study was to validate the use of water at 85°C ± 5°C to achieve high-level disinfection of a clean-in-place extracorporeal dialysis circuit. The second objective was to demonstrate that applying this hot water method to the entire fluid pathways of a newly designed dialysis instrument, including an integral reverse-osmosis membrane, routinely allowed the production o...

OBJECTIVE Phenylethanolamine-N-methyltransferase (PNMT), the enzyme that synthesizes epinephrine (EPI) from norepinephrine (NE) in the adrenal gland, is present in extra-adrenal tissues including heart. Ischemia evokes an excessive NE accumulation in the myocardial interstitial spaces. Therefore, cardiac PNMT activity with high NE levels may contribute to cardiac EPI synthesis and release evoke...

it has been recently reported in Blood by Stamatoyannopoulos et a l l that acetate stimulates synthesis of fetal hemoglobin (HbF) in vivo. It has also been reported that recombinant human erythropoietin (rHu-EPO) is a potent HbF inducer. Patients with end-stage renal disease under hemodialysis (HD) are treated by dialysate containing acetate or bicarbonate for the correction of acidosis and som...

AN69 membrane is not suited for diffusion, with an suggested limit at 25 mL/min dialysate flow rate. When prescribing continuous hemodialysis this threshold must be surpassed to achieve. We designed a study aimed to check if a higher dose of dialysis could be delivered efficiently with this membrane. Ten ICU patients under continuous hemodiafiltration with 1.4 m(2) AN69 membrane were included a...

It is believed that adenosine is released in ischemic tissues and contributes to reactive hyperemia. We tested this hypothesis in the human forearm using microdialysis to estimate interstitial and intravascular levels of adenosine and caffeine withdrawal to potentiate endogenous adenosine and determine its effect on reactive hyperemia. Forearm blood flow response to ischemia was measured by air...

Daytime exchanges with glucose osmotic agents often lead to dialysate reabsorption, poor ultrafiltration (UF), positive sodium balance, and restricted purification of uremic toxins. We studied 5 anuric children on continuous cycling peritoneal dialysis (mean age: 10 years, 10 months), comparing icodextrin to a conventional glucose-based dialysate. The same fill volume (980 +/- 290 mL/m2) and th...