PLASMA LYSYL OXIDASE ACTIVITY IN HUMAN LIVER DISEASE

Abstract

It is well known that lysyl oxidase plays a very important role in cross-linking of collagen and elastin. However we can't find any available reports about the enzyme activity in man. We succeeded to measure the plasma activity in cases with liver disease with the method of ³H₂O release assay using ³H-lysine-labelled collagen as substrate. The activity showed significantly high in alcoholic liver disease (p<0.01), primary biliary cirrhosis (p<0.01) and non-alcoholic liver cirrhosis (p<0.05) against normal subjects. The plasma activity of a case with alcoholic hepatitis altered in parallel to the degree of hepatic fibrosis after admission. The measurement of plasma lysyl oxidase activity is useful assessment for the hepatic fibrosis in a different sense from the measurement of prolyl hydroxylase or procollagen peptide.