Aluminum inhibits erythropoiesis in vitro

Anemia has been associated with aluminum intoxication in patients on chronic dialysis and in animals. In studies pre-sented here, in vitro human erythroid culture was used to de-lineate the effects of aluminum on normal hemnatopoiesis. Alu-minum by itself in routine culture, even at very high levels (1,035 ng/ml), did not significantly affect erythroid colony growth. The addition of human transferrin to the culture, how-ever, resulted in a marked dose-dependent inhibition of ery-throid, but not myeloid colony growth. At all doses, CFU-E progenitors showed greater inhibition than burst-forming units (BFU-E). Aluminum inhibition was not overcome by increas-ing the dose of erythkopoietin or adding additional burst-pro-motihg activity to the culture. Inhibition by aluminum was directly related to the number of binding sites on transferrin in the culture, and was not observed in the presence of fully iron-saturated transferrin