Mitigation of Calcification in Bovine Pericardial Bioprosthesis after Amino Acids Posttreatment

Ahn, Jae Ho

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Bovine pericardium fixed in glutaraldehyde solution (GA) has been one of the most popular surgical bioprosthesis, however, late calcific degeneration after implantation remains to be solved. To mitigate calcific degeneration, we posttreated the bovine pericardium with amino acids after GA fixation. MATERIAL AND METHOD: 40 small pieces of bovine pericardia were fixed in 0.625% GA solution with 4 g/L MgCl2 6H2O as a control group (group 1). 40 pieces fixed in the same GA solution were posttreated with 2% chitosan solution (group 2) and the other 40 pieces posttreated with 8% glutamate (group 3). These were implanted into the belly of forty Fisher 344 rats subdermally and extracted at 1 month, 2 months, 3 months and 4 months after implantation. RESULT: With atomic absorption spectrophotometry we measured the deposited calcium amount and the results were as follows; 2.01+/-0.13 mg/g in group 1, 2.34+/-0.73 mg/g in group 2, 2.49+/-0.15 mg/g in group 3 at 1 month after implantation, and 3.57+/-0.15 mg/g in group 1, 3.52+/-0.92 mg/g in group 2, 3.46+/-0.12 mg/g in group 3 at the second month. But 5.45+/-0.42 mg/g in group 1, 3.22+/-1.31 mg/g in group 2 and 4.20+/-0.55 mg/g in group 3 at the 3rd month, which have statistical significance in group 2 (p<0.05). Finally at 4th month, 6.01+/-1.21 mg/g in group 1, 3.78+/-1.82 mg/g in group 2, 3.92+/-0.92 mg/g in group 3, which also have statistical significance (p<0.05).
CONCLUSION
This means posttreatment with 2% chitosan shows meaningful calcium mitigation effects after 3rd month on subcutaneously implanted bovine pericardium in the rat models but 8% glutamate shows mitigation effect after 4months in this experiment.