In a series of 100 patients with respiratory distress, plasmin therapy with or without additional anticoagulant therapy was found to be superior to classic conservative therapy or anticoagulant therapy alone, Julian L. Ambrus, Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Buffalo, reported in a scientific exhibit at the AMA Clinical Convention.
He also illustrated successful plasmin therapy in patients with hyaline membrane disease.
The question arose whether fibrinolytic enzymes could be prepared from human blood and given in high doses to patients with various thromboembolic diseases in order to achieve therapeutic results.
"Two commercial preparations of plasmin are available at present which use human plasminogen activated with streptokinase," he said. In present studies, urokinase prepared from human urine (possibly an excreted form of human tissue activators) was used to activate human plasminogen isolated from the blood of volunteer donors.
Preliminary studies were performed in experimental animals in which blood clots were induced with