Toxin removal

Ion exchangers are sometimes used on a throwaway basis also. In the laboratoiy, ion exchangers are used to produce deionized water, purify reagents, and prepare inorganic sols. In medicine, they are used as antacid, for sodium reduction, for the sustained release of drugs, in skin-care preparations, and in toxin removal. 

The Vitagen project using immortalized hepatic cells in a hollow fiber capsule in combination with a carbon-based toxin removal system is worthy of special note. The ELADTM bioartiflcial liver support system is designed to combine the unique... 

B.C. Hitzfeld, S.J. Hoger and D.R. Dietrich, Cyanobacterial toxins removal drinking water treatment and human risk assessment, Environ. Health Perspect., 108 (2000) 113-122. 

To prevent the blood from losing its ions, these ions are included in the dialysate at the same concentration as in normal plasma to stop their diffusion through the membrane. Since uremic patients produce little or no urine, their excess water is eliminated from the blood by ultrafiltration through the membrane since blood pressure is higher than dialysate pressure. This ultrafiltration also contributes to toxin removal by carrying toxins into the dialysate. This convective transfer is more efficient than diffusion for high molecular weight toxins. 

The capacity for toxin removal of an hemodialyzer is expressed by the dialysance or the clearance which have the same unit as a flow rate. The dialysance D is defined, for each toxin as... 

Hitzfeld, B.C., Hoeger, S.J., and Dietrich, D.R. 2000. Cyanobacterial toxins Removal during drinking water treatment, and human risk assessment. Environ Health Perspect 108, 113-122. 

Feinfeld DA, Rosenberg JW, Winchester JF.Three controversial issues in extracorporeal toxin removal. Semin Dial. 2006 19 358-362... 

These attributes are used in devising intensified processes as well as in the discovery of several size dependent phenomena, especially in biology, which are subsequently utilized in BI. Currently, PHPs (both hydrophobic and hydrophilic versions) are used in the intensification of stable water-in-oil emulsion separation (demulsification), gas-liquid separation, as applied to tar and water removal from biogas produced through the gasification of biomass, BI, tissue engineering, and metal ion/toxin removal from... 

UKWIR Report (1996). Pilot scale GAC tests to evaluate toxin removal. Report Ref. No. 96/DW/07/1. 

Sodium reduction Taste masking Sustained release Diagnostic Tablet disintegration pH control Potassium removal Skin treatment Toxin removal... 

As soon as individuals or units suspect that they have been exposed to a mycotoxin attack, they should remove their BDUs, wash their contaminated skin with soap and water, and then rinse with water. Washing the contaminated area of the skin within 4 to 6 hours after exposure to T-2 toxin removed 80% to 98% of the toxin and prevented dermal lesions and death in experimental animals.25 Contaminated BDUs as well as wash waste from personnel decontamination should be exposed to household bleach (5% sodium hypochlorite) for 6 hours or more to inactivate any residue mycotoxin. 

Polyacrylamide is used in a wide range of cosmetic products such as moisturizers, lotions, creams, self-tanning products, etc. Polyacrylamides were first used as an implantable carrier for sustained delivery of insulin to lengthen the life of diabetic rats. Since then, various drug delivery systems based on polyacrylamide have been developed. It is also used as a carrier for other bioactive macromolecules and cells to produce the desired effects. Polyacrylamide-chitosan hydrogels are biocompatible and are used for sustained antibiotic release. Polyacrylamide is also used in extra corporeal toxin-removing devices, which remove unwanted toxic substances and subsequently returns the detoxified component to the circulation effectively. The function of polyacrylamide in an extracorporeal toxin removal modality is to provide a support matrix for immobilization of the functional parts or ligands. 

Thus, in accord with the results shown in Figure 4, a dependence is to be expected between the rate of toxin removal and the concentration of adsorbed toxin. 

The observed decrease in toxin removal rate that is observed in the acidic pH range on increase in exudate concentrations (Figure 6) suggests that release of exudate radicals to solution (equation 10) is a more significant process than reaction with MLR at the surface (equation 9). While reaction of the released exudate radicals with oxygen is likely (equation 10a) the extent of algal exudate peroxyl radical formation is unknown. 

A comparison of the extent of toxin removal under dark and light conditions for cases of high and low dark adsorption of toxin to the semiconductor surface is shown in Figure 9. For the high MLR adsorption case (58.1% and 21.7% MLR and AE adsorbed to Ti02 respectively), pseudo-first order removal of toxin from solution is observed with essentially all toxin degraded in the first 30 minutes. This result closely matches that observed by Feitz et al. Environ, ScL TechnoL submitted) at pH 3.5. In the low adsorption case (0% and 7.7% MLR... 

Artificial kidney designs will likely continue to experience incremental improvements in the materials and hemodynamic areas. New developments in biocompatible materials, superior transport methods for toxin removal, and improved patient management techniques will allow further maturation of hemodialysis and hemofiltration therapy. For example, considerable benefits could be realized from selective toxin removal without concomitant elimination of beneficial proteins. It has been suggested that future devices might utilize the absorption removal pathway with affinity methods as a primary technique to eliminate specific uremic toxins (Klinkmann and Vienken, 1995). 

The removal of ochratoxin A and patulin from solution by 30 different LAB was studied by Fuchs et al. (2008). Results showed thatL. acidophilus was able to remove at least 95% of ochratoxin A from liquid medium, while Bifidobacterium animalis was able to bind and remove 80% of patulin in solution. Hatab, Yue, and Mohamad (2012) also studied the ability of LAB strains to remove patuhn from liquid medium, in this case apple juice. All 10 strains used in the experiments were able to remove the toxin, at significantly different amounts, with best binding ability shown by L rhamnosus 6224 (80.4%) and Enterococcus faecium 21605 (64.5%). According to the authors, the optimal mycotoxin removal was achieved at 30 °C, the binding was toxin concentration dependent (the amount of toxin removal increased with decreasing toxin levels) and the adsorption of patulin by LAB had no negative impact on the quality of the apple juice, based on various quahty parameters (Hatab et al., 2012). 

When investigating ranoval of deoxynivalenol from solution by LAB, Franco, Garcia, Hirooka, Ono, and dos Santos (2011) reported that both viable and nonviable cells (heat inactivated by pasteurization or sterilization) led to toxin removal. However, inactivated cells bound more deoxynivalenol from solution than viable cells, with all cells inactivated by sterilization showing a significant iuCTease in binding compared to viable cells. According to the authors, this indicates that the main mechanism of detoxification was adsorption of mycotoxin by the cell components of LAB. Since the heat treatment most likely exposed cell wall components and plasma manbranes that would not be available otherwise, an increase in adsorption by those treated cells would be expected, which was confirmed by the experiment results (Franco et al., 2011). 

Instead, artificial liver application is relatively more recent and, in any case, it is a short-term bridge therapy that applies to a few cases of acute liver failure. Nevertheless, the correct application of this hemopurification procedure is vital for liver regeneration - the liver, unfike the kidney, is able to regenerate - implying complete patient recovery. For this reason, the bioartificial liver is a key solution to improve the probability of patient recovery, since the liver biological functions other than toxin removal are essential for the whole body health. 

Similar set-ups have been conceived for other organs devoted to toxin removal from the blood flow the bioartificial kidney, precisely, is a modification of the common hollow-fiber hemodialyzer, which has widespread use in the clinical practice of hydrosoluble toxin removal upon kidney failure. 

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