[The basis of treatment with recombinant human erythropoietin].

A line of transgenic mice overexpressing erythropoietin was created. These mice retained their capacity to reduce their gastro-intestinal absorption of iron and to regulate the changes in their iron metabolism and they could serve as a model for the in vivo study of iron homeostasis and erythropoiesis. NEW INDICATIONS FOR RECOMBINANT HUMAN ERYTHROPOIETIN: After chronic terminal kidney failure, the treatment of chronic dialysed kidney failure patients and patients treated with azathioprine or patients having undergone surgery and requiring transfusion, other indications have been proposed. Such as anaemia in children following inadequate production of endogenous erythropoietin and/or direct inhibition of the erythroid cell line in the bone marrow or anaemia during pregnancy and, since the Sixties, anaemia during cancer. TO ASSESS THE PHYSIOPATHOLOGY OF ANEMIA:In anaemic patients suffering from a malignant blood disease, it would be useful to calculate the relationship between the predicted and observed rates of erythropoietin as well as the transferin serum receptors.