Differentiation of fibrinolysis and fibrinogenolysis by analysis of FDP fragments]

We previously analysed the fragments of fibrin/fibrinogen degradation products (FDP) by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) combined with immunoblotting. In this report, we studied the semi-quantitative analysis of fibrinolysis (degradation of cross-linked fibrin) and fibrinogenolysis (degradation of fibrinogen and/or unstable fibrin) of patients' samples by our method. In vitro study of FDP made it clear that an appearance of D fragment confirmed fibrinogenolysis and an appearance of DD fragment and/or high molecular weight fragments which have higher molecular weight than DY or X fragment confirmed fibrinolysis. In addition, a study with mixtures of various concentrations of fibrin degradation products (FbDP) and fibrinogen degradation products (FgDP) demonstrated a dose dependent intensity of band by immunoblot method. These results show that our method is favorable for the semi-quantitative analysis of fibrinolysis and fibrinogenolysis. We applied the method to 6 samples from patients with disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). Consequently, fibrinogenolysis was observed in all of 6 samples, in which fibrinogenolysis was more enhanced than fibrinolysis in one sample, and an equivalent degree of fibrinolysis and fibrinogenolysis were observed in 3 of 6 samples. Although our method was probably devoid of the ability to distinguish FgDP from degradation products of unstable fibrin, these findings indicate that fibrinogenolysis is, at any rate, enhanced in the majority of patients with DIC, besides fibrinolysis.