[Granulocyte functions of chronic hemodialysis patients]

With increasing number of chronic hemodialysis (HD) patients, urologists share much more chance to encounter HD patients who need urological operations. In these patients healing of surgical wound was sometimes hampered by intractable infection. In this paper we investigated granulocyte functions of HD patients. Thirty two male HD patients (20-50 years of age) and 18 healthy volunteers, who had no infectious foci and had no anti-inflammatory drugs were adopted. Heparinized blood samples were drawn between 8:00 an 9:00 am from the volunteers, and just before HD from the HD patients. The oxygen dependent microbicidal response of granulocytes was evaluated by luminol dependent chemiluminescence which measured the amount of superoxide produced by opsonized zymosan stimulated granulocytes. Phagocytic function of granulocytes was evaluated by counting the number of granulocytes which phagocytized fluorescent monodisperse carboxylated microspheres by flow cytometry. Superoxide production per 1000 granulocytes of HD patients was significantly higher than that of normal control. During HD superoxide production was temporally decreased for the first one hour, became maximal at the end of HD and returned to the baseline level on the second post HD day. Phagocytosis was significantly depressed in HD patients. This functional deficit could lead to prolonged healing of infection in HD patients.