A new study from the Lambris Lab demonstrates a way to tame the inflammatory response in kidney dialysis. Frequent kidney dialysis is essential for the approximately 350,000 end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients in the United States. But it can also cause systemic inflammation, leading to complications such as cardiovascular disease and anemia, and patients who rely on the therapy have a five-year survival rate of only 35 percent. Such inflammation can be triggered when the complement cascade, part of the body's innate immune system, is inadvertently activated by modern polymer-based dialysis blood filters. The paper "Therapeutic C3 inhibitor Cp40 abrogates complement activation induced by modern hemodialysis filters," co-authored by Daniel Ricklin, PhD, and published online in Immunobiology ahead of print, describes an effective way to avoid these problems by temporarily suppressing complement during dialysis. The study took place in nonhuman primates to validate Cp40's complement-inhibiting properties in whole animals. Even after undergoing a single session of dialysis using a pediatric hemodialysis filter with high biocompatibility, healthy animals showed strong complement activation with 5 percent of their C3 being converted to a form that can trigger inflammation and stimulate the immune system.
Read the Department of Communications news release.