Plasma Prothrombin during Treatment with Dicumarol

Abstract

Niléhn, J. E. & Ganrot, P. O. Plasma Prothrombin during Treatment with Dicumarol. I. Immunochemical determination of its concentration in plasma. Scand. J. clin. Lab. Invest. 22, 17-22, 1968.

A rabbit anti-human prothrombin was prepared which reacted not only with prothrombin but also with a prothrombin derivative found in serum. The plasma prothrombin and the serum derivative proved separable by gel electrophoresis. This made it possible to study the rate of activation of prothrombin after recalcification of citrated plasma with ‘antigen-antibody crossed electrophoresis’. The fibrinogen coagulated almost immediately after activation of the prothrombin had begun and most of the prothrombin was activated after the coagulation.

A significant correlation was found between the immunochemically determined concentration of prothrombin and the prothrombin-proconvertin activity in plasma samples from 133 patients, some of whom were receiving treatment with Dicumarol. But the range of variation of the immunochemically determined concentration was narrower than that of the P & P activity and the concentration was only slightly decreased in the Dicumarol-treated cases with very low P & P values. The findings show that the synthesis of prothrombin protein is not blocked by Dicumarol.

Key Words:

• Blood coagulation
• Dicumarol
• prothrombin
• vitamin K