Release of vascular plasminogen activator (v-PA) after venous stasis: electrophoretic—zymographic analysis of free and complexed v-PA

Abstract

Summary. To better characterize the plasminogen activators present in the euglobulin fraction (EF) of plasma before and after venous occlusion, euglobulins of 30 healthy volunteers and of 32 patients with idiopathic thromboembolic disease were submitted to SDS-PAGE and zymographic detection. The patterns thus obtained were compared to the fibrinolytic activity (FA) of the EFs measured on fibrin plates. There were significantly more patients with a low fibrinolytic response (FR) to stasis (difference between FA after and before stasis ≤0.3 TAU/ml) than controls (P 1.3 TAU/ml) is always associated with the presence of free v-PA (68 kdalton band); (iii) free v-PA is never detected when the FR is low; and (iv) a poor FR is generally (15 of 17 patients with low FR) associated with apparently complete inhibition of the released v-PA by the fast-acting antiactivator; in the two remaining patients in whom no broadening of the 110 kdalton band is observed, the release mechanism for v-PA is probably impaired.