Summary
Activated platelets are implicated in the development of premature arterial vascular
diseases, in particular ischemic stroke. Since elevated cytosolic [Ca2+]i is an integrative marker of platelet activation, we determined the generation of
Ca2+ signal in stimulated platelets from 26 young patients recuperating from stroke, 20
patients with symptomatic peripheral arterial disease, and 56 healthy volunteers.
Even in the presence of aspirin, the platelets from various individuals showed highly
different thrombin-induced Ca2+ responses. On average, the thrombin-induced Ca2+ response was increased for platelets from either patient group in comparison to the
controls (P <0.04). Relatively more stroke patients had high-responsive platelets
(27%, 7/26) than patients with peripheral arterial disease (10%, 2/20) or healthy
subjects (4%, 2/56). The average prothrombinase activities of platelets from patients
and controls were similar, but 3 out of 6 patients with increased thrombin-induced
Ca2+ responses also exhibited high prothrombinase activity. In a follow-up study, the
subject-dependent thrombin-induced Ca2+ response was found to correlate strongly with the platelet response to protease-activated
receptor 1 (PAR1) agonist (r = 0.91), but was not linked to the PlA1/2 polymorphism. It is concluded that a significant part of young patients with stroke
have platelets with hyperactivity toward thrombin, which is not normalised by aspirin
treatment. Furthermore, the subject-dependent variation in thrombin-induced signalling
is likely to involve PAR1-mediated platelet activation.
Keywords
Aspirin - calcium - ischemic stroke - platelets - thrombin receptors