Treatment of aluminum overload using a cartridge with immobilized desferrioxamine

Intravenous desferrioxamine (DFO) is the method commonly used to treat aluminum toxicity. This laboratory has developed a hollow fiber device with immobilized DFO, an "Aluminum DFO-HP" (DFO-HP), for the purpose of removing aluminum without the chelator (DFO) entering the blood. With Food and Drug Administration approval, a polysulfone DFO-HP, placed in the extracorporeal circuit in series with the patient's customary dialyzer, was tested for its safety and ability to remove aluminum in patients with ESRD who had aluminum overload. During treatment with this device, no toxic reactions, side effects, or hematologic or clinical laboratory changes were seen other than those associated with dialysis. Average aluminum clearance with the DFO-HP device was 25.3 mL/min with a range of 7.2 to 52.4 mL/min, whereas aluminum clearance with the F-60 polysulfone high-flux dialyzer was 8.4 mL/min. Aluminum clearance of the cuprophane dialyzers in series with the DFO-HP was negligible. The amount of aluminum removed over a 2-h treatment with DFO-HP ranged from 94 to 628 micrograms, which corresponded to 32 to 199% of the initial aluminum in the circulation before that particular treatment. The excess 99% was provided from aluminum released from tissue sites into the circulation throughout the duration of the treatment. It is expected that, because of the efficiency and safety of the DFO-HP device, the time presently needed for aluminum depletion using intravenous DFO will be greatly shortened and the potential toxicity of intravenous DFO will be eliminated.