Basic Study and Clinical Utility of TAT Measuring in Dogs

Abstract

Thrombin-Antithrombin Complex (TAT) has recently been used in medicine for humans as an early diagnostic marker for disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and thromboembolisms. It is unknown whether the same approach that is used to detect TAT in humans (hTAT) can also be applied to canine TAT (cTAT) in dogs. Thus, we used canine plasma with extremely low concentrations of cTAT to consecutively dilute canine plasma that contained high concentrations of cTAT and evaluated the extent to which the antibody commonly used to detect hTAT can also detect cTAT. Our results indicated that the hTAT antibody reproducibly reacted with cTAT over a wide range of concentrations of cTAT, excluding samples with extremely low concentrations of cTAT. Additionally, we measured fluctuations in the concentration of cTAT in dogs with underlying diseases that resulted in hypercoagulopathy. We found that the concentrations of cTAT rapidly normalized in dogs that responded favorably to the treatment for their underlying disease, while concentrations of cTAT remained high when the dogs responded poorly to the treatment. Our study demonstrates for the first time that the methods routinely used to detect hTAT in human patients can also be used in dogs to detect and compare various concentrations of cTAT and suggests that evaluating the concentrations of cTAT may be an effective way to confirm the subject's response to treatment.