Hemo biometrics for various animals
In determining an appropriate animal model for hemodialysis efficacy, several metrics need to be compared to the human vasculature. Blood volume, blood pressure, and heart rate could effect the suitability of these animals to model clinical hemodialysis. Blood volume can be estimated as follows. Blood weight is ~ 7% of body weight, the density of blood is 1.05 kg/L. This Numbers spread sheet (Animal Blood: NUMBERS) or Excel (Animal Blood: EXCEL) will generate the estimate based on weight in kg or lbs. It also contains blood volumes for some animals from literature. Also included in the spreadsheet are blood pressure and heart rate. Pigs are not included in this chart, mainly due to the wide range of porcine body weight.
Update by Jim: We often need to know the water volume for various animals. This paper reports 0.73 as the ratio of the water mass to fat-free body mass.
The value for rat blood in the table above is wrong. Should be 3 ml. The total water volume in a 45 g rat should be about 30 ml. We will assume this is the urea distribution volume until we know better. So the ratios of rat weight, water volume and blood volume are ~ 1 : 0.7 : 0.07.
Unfortunately, there seems to be nothing we can do for Giraffe’s with ESRD.
Rats might be the perfect size to keep the device cheap and small.
I like rats as well. Some of them can be quite large. Chinchillas and rabbits are two larger rodents that are sometimes used in other disease models, though I haven’t seen them used specifically for vascular access of hemodialysis.