Japanese Journal of Clinical Chemistry

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First, I introduced briefly signal transduction in intact cells. The following were discussed: 1) The role of tyrosine kinase, which responds to extracellular stimulation. 2) The role of GTP protein, which transmits a signal from membrane receptor to cytoplasmic protein as a second messenger. 3) The role of MAP kinase signal, which participates in pathways important for cell proliferation and differentiation and apoptosis. Next, the relationship between diseases including cancer and intracellular signaling transduction abnormality was described. The importance of transcriptional factors that integrate cellular siginaling was shown and the relationship between some diseases and transcriptional control abnormality of nuclear factor-kappa B (NFκB) was focused on. It was found that constitutive NF-κB activation in cancer cells affects the antiapoptotic function, and that TNF-α or lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced hyperactivation of NF-κB is the crucial etiology of the systemic inflammatory reaction syndrome (SIRS).

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Several reports showed that measurement of serum matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3) level is useful for diagnosis and management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Recently, a new latex turbidimetric immunoassay for MMP-3 has been developed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the utility of this method. We obtained serum samples from170 patients (Male 57, Female 113;Age 55.2±15.6). The basic study of the new latex assay showed satisfactory results, and a high correla- tion was observed between this assay and the Enzyme- linked Immunosorbent assay “MMP-3 Plate”. These findings suggest that the automated new latex assay for MMP-3 is beneficial for RA.

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Brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) is known to be degraded during the preservation of blood samples. We investigated the stability of BNP in the blood preserved under various conditions. The most effective protection against BNP degradation was obtained by preserving blood samples as plasma with EDTA and aprotinin at 4°C. Under this condition, mostly more than 90% of BNP was detected after 6 hours. The omission of aprotinin weakened the protective effect. In serum, BNP was rapidly degraded but stabilized by EDTA and aprotinin at 4°C. A “Protease inhibitor cocktail” had the effect similar to that of EDTA and aprotinin. Leupeptin, a component in this cocktail, was the most effective agent. These observations suggested that non-frozen blood samples for BNP measurement could be preserved with EDTA and aprotinin at 4°C for several hours.

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Serum PAF-AH (platelet-activating factor acetylhydrolase) is considered to play a defensive role in allergic, inflammatory, and atherosclerotic diseases.
We investigated the clinical significance of the serum PAF-AH activity assay in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM).
Reference interval in normal men (223-683 IU/L) was higher than in women (183-538 IU/L)(p<0.01). Both of the serum PAF-AH activities for all and men in DM were not significantly different from those reference intervals. On the other hand, the serum PAF-AH activities for women in DM was significantly higher than its reference interval. The serum PAF-AH activities of DM with hyperlipidemia and polydisperse low density lipoproteinemia were higher than that of normal subjects. Therefore, the PAF-AH activity assay seemed to be very useful for estimation of clinical prognosis in DM with hyperlipidemia and polydisperse low density lipoproteinemia.

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