[Hemodiafiltration with endogenous reinfusion in chronic inflammation: a possible therapeutic alternative?].

Abstract The patients under maintenance haemodialysis (HD) continue to have an unacceptably excess of mortality compared to general population, that may be explained by high prevalence of inflammation that significantly influences the survival of these patients. Indeed, chronic inflammation is very common in HD and it may cause malnutrition and progression of atherosclerotic disease by several pathogenetic mechanisms triggered by pro-inflammatory cytokines. Currently no pharmacological intervention is specifically targeted the idiopathic chronic inflammation. Hemodiafiltration with endogenous reinfusion (HFR) is a dialysis technique, highly biocompatible, that combines three depurative mechanisms: diffusion, convection and absorption. The ultrafiltrate is obtained from convective section of dialyzer (convection). It is regenerated by passing through the adsorbent macro-porous synthetic resin cartridge (absorption) and then it is reinfused into the second section of the filter (diffusion). This resin cartridge is able to absorb cytokines and other uremic toxins, whereas allows to pass nutrients and antioxidants, as amino acids and vitamins, with a consequent decrement of inflammation and oxidative stress. These characteristics suggest the use of HFR in HD patients affected by overt and idiopathic chronic inflammation. In these patients, we observed that the switching from Bic-HD to HFR allowed an improvement of inflammatory as testified by a significant decrement of serum levels of CRP IL-6, IL-1 and TNF- and a significant increase of albumin and pre-albumin. Whether these favorable effects may modify the outcomes of these high-risk patients, needs to be confirmed by studies ad-hoc.