Anaemia correction in diabetic patients with chronic kidney disease: lessons from the TREAT study

Correspondence: Angel M. de Francisco Servicio de Nefrologia. Hospital Universitario Valdecilla. Santander. Spain. martinal@unican.es One of the most important therapeutic advances in controlling anaemia in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) was the synthesis of recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEPO) in 1985. The only option for those of us who were treating dialysis patients with a haemoglobin level of 5 or 7g/dl at that time was to perform multiple transfusions, which not only increased the probability of viral infections, but also created sensitivities in patients who might eventually undergo a kidney transplant, or produced an iron overload. The clinical trials produced such favourable results that rHuEPO was accepted by health regulation agencies as a treatment agent in 1988, only three years after its discovery.