ANTICOAGULANT AND ANTIGENIC LEVELS OF PROTEIN C AND PROTEIN S IN PATIENTS ON STABILIZED ORAL ANTICOAGULANT TREATMENT

Isolated deficiencies of protein C and protein S, two vitamin K-dependent plasma proteins, constitute about 70% of the congenital abnormalities of blood coagulation observed in patients with recurrent venous thrombosis beLow the age of 40. The laboratory diagnosis of congenital deficiency of these proteins represents a major problem since a large proportion of patients are on oral anticoagulation (OA) at the time the deficiencies are suspected.Under these circumstances the availability of a reference interval obtained in patients on stabilized OA has proven useful.Functional (C) and antigenic levels (Ag) of protein C, protein S, factor IX and II were estimated in 136 patients on stabilized OA, subdivided according to the degree of anticoagulation (Internatio nal Normalized Ratio, INR).The results indicate that with increasing anticoagulation the activity levels of all the vitamin K-dependent factors decrease to a greater extent than the corresponding antigenic levels. At variance with the other factors, total protein S antigen levels are only moderately reduced by OA with protein S anticoagulant activi ty comparing well to factor IX clotting activity. These data suggest the possibility of identifying both quantitative and qualita tive deficiencies of protein C and protein S in patients on oral anticoagulant treatment.