Niihara Y, Matsui NM, Shen YM, Akiyama DA, Johnson CS, Sunga MA, Magpayo J, Embury SH, Kalra VK, Ho Cho S, Tanaka KR. L-glutamine therapy reduces endothelial adhesion of sickle red blood cells to human umbilical vein endothelial cells.
BMC HEMATOLOGY 2005;
5:4. [PMID:
16042803 PMCID:
PMC1198219 DOI:
10.1186/1471-2326-5-4]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 35] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/02/2004] [Accepted: 07/25/2005] [Indexed: 12/02/2022]
Abstract
Background
We have previously demonstrated that therapy with orally administered L-glutamine improves nicotinamide adenosine dinucleotide (NAD) redox potential of sickle red blood cells (RBC). On further analysis of L-glutamine therapy for sickle cell anemia patients, the effect of L-glutamine on adhesion of sickle RBC to human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) was examined.
Methods
The first part of the experiment was conducted with the blood samples of the 5 adult sickle cell anemia patients who had been on L-glutamine therapy for at least 4 weeks on a dosage of 30 grams per day compared to those of patient control group. In the second part of the experiment 6 patients with sickle cell anemia were studied longitudinally. Five of these patients were treated with oral L-glutamine 30 grams daily and one was observed without treatment as the control. t-test and paired t-test were used for determination of statistical significance in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies respectively.
Results
In the first study, the mean adhesion to endothelial cells with the autologous plasma incubated cells were 0.97 ± 0.45 for the treated group and 1.91 ± 0.53 for the nontreated group (p < 0.02). Similarly with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) incubated cells the mean adhesion to endothelial cells were 1.39 ± 0.33 for the treated group and 2.80 ± 0.47 for the untreated group (p < 0.001). With the longitudinal experiment, mean decrease in the adhesion to endothelial cells was 1.13 ± 0.21 (p < 0.001) for the 5 treated patients whereas the control patient had slight increase in the adhesion to endothelial cells.
Conclusion
In these studies, oral L-glutamine administration consistently resulted in improvement of sickle RBC adhesion to HUVEC. These data suggest positive physiological effects of L-glutamine in sickle cell disease.
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