Ischemia-reperfusion injury in the liver during renal transplantation: does perfusion solution play any role?

The effect of ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury within a transplanted kidney has not been reported on the liver as a remote organ. One hypothesis is that there is no difference between kidney perfusion solutions regarding antioxidants in liver after an I/R injury. We used four pigs with Ringer's lactate (RL); four with university of Wisconsin (UW); and two in a control (C) group. A liver parenchymal biopsy was obtained before renal artery/vein solution clamping for 20 minutes. Either RL or UW solutions were infused through arterial cannulas for 20 minutes as previously described elsewhere. For the sham group, we used 0.9% NaCl. After reperfusion for 20 minutes, we obtained a second liver parenchymal biopsy. Measurements of superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GP-x), and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels were compared using paired student t tests within groups and analysis of variance between groups. The results were expressed as mean values +/- SEM with P < .05 accepted as significant. Although GP-x, SOD, and MDA decreased after ischemia-perfusion-reperfusion injuries in all groups, except MDA in UW and SOD, and MDA in C groups; only the MDA for C was significant (P = .04) Comparing the groups, GP-x (P = .01) and MDA (P = .003) levels after ischemia-perfusion-reperfusion were significant while changes in SOD levels did not show any difference (P > .05). In a kidney transplantation model, the liver was affected during the ischemia-perfusion-reperfusion process as evidenced by antioxidant enzymes. The pathophysiology and clinical importance of this phenomenon requires further study. Comparing the perfusion solutions, no difference was found between RL and UW regarding their effects to decrease renal I/R injury on the liver in pigs.