Bacterial endotoxins and antigen-antibody aggregates activate complement, accelerate blood coagulation, and are implicated in intravascular blood clotting (1-7). Tha t their effect on blood coagulation proceeds through the activation of the complement system has been suspected bu t has never been shown. We have found that these and other complement-activating materials initiate blood coagulatio...

Disseminated intravascular coagulation is a frequent complication of sepsis. Coagulation activation, inhibition of fibrinolysis, and consumption of coagulation inhibitors lead to a procoagulant state resulting in inadequate fibrin removal and fibrin deposition in the microvasculature. As a consequence, microvascular thrombosis contributes to promotion of organ dysfunction. Recently, three rando...

OBJECTIVE In endotoxemia, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induces a systemic inflammatory response and intravascular coagulation. Monocytes orchestrate the innate immune response to LPS by expressing a variety of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), and the procoagulant molecule, tissue factor (TF). In this study, we analyzed the role of the phosphoinositide 3-k...

www.aafp.org/afp AMERICAN FAMILY PHYSICIAN 419 vessel wall and, in response to the exposed subendothelial collagen, release adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and thromboxane A2. The released ADP and thromboxane A2 cause further platelet aggregation and the formation of a platelet plug that is responsible for primary hemostasis. Secondary hemostatic mechanisms consist of a series of sequential enzymat...

Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS) is a thrombotic microangiopathy caused by uncontrolled activation of the alternative pathway of complement at the cell surface level that leads to microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, and acute kidney failure. In approximately one half of affected patients, pathogenic loss-of-function variants in regulators of complement or gain-of-funct...

Chronic sleep loss, a common feature of human life in industrialized countries, is associated to cardiovascular disorders. Variations in functional parameters of coagulation might contribute to explain this relationship. By exploiting the mouse model and a specifically designed protocol, we demonstrated that seven days of partial sleep deprivation significantly decreases (-30.5%) the thrombin g...

The components and reactions of the fibrinolysis system are well understood. The pathway has fewer reactants and interactions than coagulation, but the generation of a complete quantitative model is complicated by the need to work at the solid-liquid interface of fibrin. Diagnostic tools to detect disease states due to malfunctions in the fibrinolysis pathway are also not so well developed as i...

adenosine acts as neuromodulator in the brain, which its involvement in a wide range of brain processes and diseases has been studied, such as epilepsy, sleep, anxiety, panic disorder, alzheimer’s disease, parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia. adenosine receptors have been detected: a1r, a2ar (a2ar), a2br, and a3r. a1r and a2r inhibit camp production, while a2ar and a2br stimulate camp product...

PN-1 is a potent and specific inhibitor of thrombin, PN-2 operates by an entirely different mechanism, characteristic of the kunins, to serve as a potent (K i ϳ 500pM) and highly specific inhibitor of the unique, homodimeric coagulation proteinase, factor XIa (FXIa). Both PN-2 and PN-1 are present in plasma at concentrations far too low to inhibit their cog-nate proteinases, but are secreted fr...

Sepsis is almost invariably associated with haemostatic abnormalities ranging from subclinical activation of blood coagulation (hypercoagulability), which may contribute to localized venous thromboembolism, to acute disseminated intravascular coagulation ( characterized by massive thrombin formation and widespread microvascular thrombosis, partly responsible of the multiple organ dysfunction sy...