Increased Plasminogen Activator Inhibition Levels in Malignancy

Summary

Plasminogen activator(PA) - tissue and urokinase type - and PA-inhibition in plasma were investigated in 52 consecutive cancer patients with a variety of tumors. At first patients were analyzed as one group. Secondly patients were subdivided into two groups, one with (n = 42) and one without (n = 10) metastasis. Our results show that tissue-type-PA antigen (t-PA-antigen) and PA-inhibition were both significantly increased irrespective of the presence or absence of tumor metastasis (p <0.001) compared to age matched healthy controls. In the group without metastasis a significantly decreased level of t-PA activity was found (p <0.001) but in the group with metastasis t-PA activity was normal. These data seem to reject the hypothesis that decreased plasma fibrinolytic activity is one of the prerequisites for tumor metastasis.

Keywords

Tissue-type plasminogen activator activity - Tissue-type plasminogen activator antigen - Plasminogen activator inhibition - Urokinase-type plasminogen activator antigen

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