Heat Disinfection of HD Water Treatment System in Hemodialysis Patients

Inflammation is common in individuals with both chronic kidney disease (CKD) and hemodialysis (HD). HD may lead to increased inflammatory response through a number of mechanisms; some of these factors also result in pro-inflammatory cytokine release and consequently cause the overlap between anemia, accelerated atherosclerosis and inflammation. HD-related inflammation is mainly due to underlying kidney disease, coexisting comorbidities, uremia per se, dialyzer membrane biocompatibility and contaminated dialysis fluid. Accordingly, HD patients are chronically exposed to microinflammation as a result of blood-membrane interaction and dialysis fluid contamination. Among these factors, biofilm formation and contaminated dialysis fluid are closely related to enhanced immune activation in HD patients. Furthermore, only dialysis fluid quality is controllable and preventable. Therefore, to correct rHuEPO poor response and reduce the cardiovascular (CV) events, it prompts us to conduct a prospective randomized controlled study to explore as to whether heat disinfection link in HD water treatment system can effectively prevent biofilm formation, to ensure the dialysis fluid purity, and subsequently to improve the patient outcome, in terms of CV events and mortality.

Inclusion criteria

• age over 20 years and duration of HD over 3 months, and clinically stable

Exclusion criteria

• patients with acute infection, malignancy, active autoimmune disease, GI bleeding or blood loss; systemic inflammatory disease; life expectancy less than 3 months, and unwilling to participate in this study.