Mitigation of Calcification in Bovine Percardial Bioprosthesis: The Effects of Posttreatment with Amino Acids

Borine pericardial bioprosthesis fixed in glutaraldehyde(GA) is most popular surgical materials but late calcific degeneration is remained to be solved. To prevent the calcific degeneration, we sdded MgCl₂ into the GA solution to compete with calcium for bending the free aldehyde from GA solution to compete with calcium for binding to the free aldehyde from GA and posttreated with amino acids to enhance the mitigating effect.

40 pieces of bovine pericardia were fixed in 0.625% GA solution with 4g/L MgCl₂ · 6H₂O as a control(group 1). 40 pieces fixde in the same condition were posttreated with 4% chitosan(group 2) and the other 40 pieces posttreated with 8% glutamate(group 3). These were implanted into the belly of 40 Sprague-Dawley subdermally and extracted on 1 month, 2 month, 3 month and 6 months after implantation.

We measured the calcium deposited in those pericardia with atomic absorption spectrophotometry and the results were these ; calcium deposition in group 1 on 1 month after implantation was 0.283±0.059mg/g, 1.338±0.732mg/g in group 2 and 0.469±0.215mg/g in group 3, on the 2nd month 0.921±0.342mg/g in group 1, 6.521±1.919mg/g in group 2 and 2.772±1.747mg/g in group 3, on the 3rd month 0.785±0.212mg/g in group 1, 12.223±3.305mg/g in group 2 and 2.655±0.905mg/g in group 3, and on the 6th month 1.621±1.475mg/g in group 1, 9.121±3.373mg/g in group 2 and 2.916±1.461mg/g in group 3, which have statistical significance(p<0.05).

This means posttreatment with with chitosan or glutamate show no calcium mitigation effects on subcutaneously implanted bovine pericardium in the this experiment which is quite different from others.