Very low doses of direct intravenous iron in each session as maintenance therapy in hemodialysis patients.

AbstractBackground: Intravenous (IV) iron supplementation is widely used in hemodialysis (HD) patients to treat their periodic losses. However, the ideal dose and frequency is unknown. The goal of the study is to see if a 20 mg dose of iron IV at the end of each session of HD as iron maintenance is better than the iron prior therapy. We analyze the erythropoiesis activity (EA) and functional iron (FI) after four weeks of treatment.Methods: In 36 patients, we measure reticulocyte count and content of hemoglobin reticulocyte (CHr) as EA and FI markers, respectively, before and after the treatment. Before the study, 23 patients received another different therapy with IV iron as maintenance therapy.Results: Reticulocyte count: 49.7 ± 23.8 × 103 before and 47.2 ± 17.2 × 103 after the treatment (p= 0.51). The CHr: 34.8 ± 3.7 pg and 34.4 ± 3.5 pg, respectively, (p= 0.35), showing an excellent correlation with the other FI markers (serum iron r = 0.6; p = 0.001; saturation transferrin r = 0.49; p = 0.004); that i...