Osmotic agents for peritoneal dialysis.

Glucose has more advantages than drawbacks and is now the sole agent used in clinical practice. Yet there is interest in finding a substitute for glucose as an osmotic agent in peritoneal dialysis solution. Work has identified several promising agents such as albumin, amino acids, gelatin and glycerol but it appears that every one of them, including glucose, would be useful for a short-dwell or for a long-dwell exchange but not for both. Some of them, such as albumin and the amino acids, are close to being an ideal osmotic agent but are prohibitively costly to manufacture. We predict that interest in the future will focus on dialysis solutions containing a mixture of osmotic agents. Such a solution would be acceptable for both short and long-dwell exchanges. It will have a sufficiently low concentration of different agents to minimize toxicity and long-term undesirable side effects. We expect that solutions will be available to better meet patients needs in the near future.