L-Glutamine therapy reduces endothelial adhesion of sickle red blood cells to human umbilical vein endothelial cells

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.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.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.Sickle cell disease is a devastating hereditary disorder with excruciating morbidities often resulting in the premature demise of the patients. This disease affects primarily those of African descent, although other ethnic groups such as the Hispanic population on American continents are also affected with relatively high incidence [1-3].Incapacitating complications of sickle cell disease are usually due to severe anemia and frequent vasoocclusive processes which damage tissues [1-6]. The cause of these events is attributed largely to increased adherence of sickle re