A Deficiency of Pulmonary Fibrinolysis in Hyaline-Membrane Disease

Abstract

THE absence of fibrinolytic enzyme activity in the A lungs of newborn infants succumbing to hyaline-membrane disease was recently reported.¹ This enzyme abnormality was manifested by an inability of lung preparations to activate plasminogen (profibrinolysin), and could have resulted either from a true absence of the tissue activator or from an excess of inhibitor.As a result of these findings it was postulated that this deficiency of lung plasminogen-activator activity predisposed certain newborn infants to hyaline-membrane formation. A coincident aspiration of amniotic fluid containing thromboplastin and an alveolar effusion of blood plasma, as well as a period of air breathing, . . .