Objective: Protein carbamylation is a urea-driven post-translational protein modification associated with mortality in dialysis patients. Free amino acids (AAs) are competitive inhibitors of protein carbamylation and animal studies suggest increasing AA concentrations reduces carbamylation burden. We hypothesized that AA therapy in maintenance hemodialysis patients would reduce carbamylation, carrying the potential to improve clinical outcomes.
Design: Prospective pilot clinical trial (NCT1612429).
Setting: The study was conducted from March 2013 to March 2014 in outpatient dialysis facilities in the Boston metropolitan area.
Subjects and intervention: We enrolled 23 consecutively consenting hemodialysis subjects, infusing the first 12 individuals with 250 cc of AAs 3 times per week postdialysis over 8 weeks. The remaining 11 subjects served as controls.
Main outcome measure: Change in carbamylated albumin (C-Alb), a measure of total body carbamylation burden, between baseline and 8 weeks was the primary outcome.
Results: The treated and control groups had similar clinical characteristics and similar baseline C-Alb levels (mean ± SE 9.5 ± 2.4 and 9.3 ± 1.3 mmol/mol, respectively; P = .61). The treated arm showed a significant reduction in C-Alb compared with controls at 4 weeks (8.4% reduction in the treated arm vs. 4.3% increase in controls; P = .03) and the effect was greater by 8 weeks (15% reduction in the treated vs. 1% decrease in controls; P = .01).
Conclusion: In this pilot study, AA therapy appeared safe and effective at reducing C-Alb levels in hemodialysis patients compared with no treatment. The impact of reduced protein carbamylation on clinical outcomes should be further investigated.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01612429.
Copyright © 2015 National Kidney Foundation, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.