The two conditions may be related, since the reduction
in IH may contribute to reducing the risk of long-term
volume overload and interdialytic hypertension by lowering
the need of intradialytic sodium loading and allowing
a more consistent attainment of dry weight [43, 44] . We
also cannot exclude the possibility that a lag time phenomenon
[45] (due to a more aggressive dehydration before
randomization for AFB patients) contributing to different
time course of predialysis SBP between BD and AFB; this
is unlikely in our study, however, because the difference
in SBP between BD and AFB only became evident as of the
12th month of follow-up (i.e. 20–22 months after starting
dialysis), whereas the lag time phenomenon has been described
only up to 10–12 months after attaining the target
weight [45, 46] . On the other hand, a lag time phenomenon
may explain the time course of the changes in predialysis
SBP for AFB versus BD, as a result of AFB being
more successful in attaining a better extracellular volume
control already in the first 6 months of this treatment