Treatment for Acute Intermittent Porphyria #2 - Heme Treatment

Heme treatment is one of the latest treatment for AIP currently and it typically utilized when severe attacks of AIP (Meena et al., 2016).  Nowadays, glucose administration has been replaced intravenous heme.  The reason has been replaced is because heme treatment is the most effective treatment for regulate the acute attack in AIP (Anderson et al., 2005; Dosi et al., 2013 & Puy et al., 2010).  According to Dosi et al. (2013), the patient had been improved by the heme treatment in the second day.  Half of a year later, the patient had been recovered from AIP, and can continued to live on.  This study also indicated that heme treatment was to avoid the overproduction in aminolevulinic acid (ALA) and porphobilinogen (PBG) (Dosi et al., 2013). Another case study also using the intravenous heme to regulate the PBG. Elkhatib et al. (2014) revealed that patient administered the heme treatment intravenously to control the PBG.

Figure 28. Intravenous heme