Adsorption of proteins to hemodialysers. Comparison of plasma and whole blood in vitro studies

In vitro experiments were performed in which three different kinds of hemodialysis membranes were exposed either to normal blood or whole plasma. It was determined whether the products of cell lysis could be responsible for the protein degradation observed in clinical analysis. Results indicated that the immunoblots were similar for the same dialyzer type. Degradation was more extensive in the whole blood experiments. Probably because of the release of proteases from damaged cells, some proteins showed decreased amounts of intact molecules and an increased amount of lower molecular weight fragments. In the plasma experiments, the concentration of protein eluted from the different dialyzer membranes ranged from 5.7 to 13 μg/cm².