Dr. Allen Alfrey, who died June 16 at age 76, became internationally recognized for discovering a way to lengthen the lives of kidney dialysis patients.
He died of pulmonary fibrosis at the Hospice of Denver the day after his birthday, said his wife, Patricia Alfrey.
Alfrey, a longtime researcher at the Veterans Affairs Hospital and the University of Colorado Hospital, “was an international expert on kidney failure, but was enormously kind, humble and modest,” said a longtime colleague, Dr. Robert Schrier of Englewood, former chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Colorado Hospital and now a professor there.
Alfrey was puzzled why so many dialysis patients got dementia and bone disease within five years of beginning dialysis. Few lived beyond five years.
He decided to test patients’ blood for metals and found unusually high concentrations of aluminum, said Schrier.
He tested the brains of patients who had died, said Dr. William Kaehny, and discovered in 1972 that dialysis patients had high concentrations of aluminum after dialysis and their systems weren’t able to get rid of it as most people do.
“He may have thought of metals because he had planned to be a geologist,” said Kaehny, chief of medicine at the VA hospital.
Once a way was determined to get the aluminum out of the patients’ systems, the dementia, officially dialysis encephalopathy, didn’t occur, said Kaehny.
Now dialysis patients can live 20 years or longer, he said.
Alfrey “had a curious mind and an incredible intellect,” said his wife, Patricia Alfrey. “He was a lifelong learner.”
He retired in 1997, but continued to teach, she said.
Allen Carlton Alfrey was born in Brownwood, Texas, on June 15, 1932.
He went to Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, for three years and earned his medical degree in 1957 at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
He married Patricia Browning in 1955.
Alfrey held several positions at the University of Colorado, including assistant professor, associate professor and professor of medicine and co-chairman of the Division of Renal Diseases.
He was a visiting professor at Sydney University in Sydney, Australia; honorary professor at Xi’an Medical University in Xi’an, China; and chief of the renal section at the VA hospital.
He wrote many articles and “spoke all over the world” about dialysis, his wife said.
His research won numerous awards.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his son, Matthew Alfrey, of Portland, Ore., and his daughter, Shawn Alfrey, of Denver; four grandchildren; his sister, Jo Ann Bedford of New Braunfels, Texas; and two brothers, Dr. Clarence Alfrey of Houston and Thomas N. Alfrey of Denver.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
