Plasma levels of urokinase-type plasminogen activator have been investigated in 80 patients with prostatic carcinoma by means of a radioimmunoassay. A total of 30 patients with disseminated prostatic carcinoma had significantly elevated levels of urokinase-type plasminogen activator, whereas the plasma levels in patients without metastases did not differ from a healthy age matched control group. Sensitivity of elevated urokinase-type plasminogen activator levels in patients with prostatic carcinoma for the presence of metastases was 80 per cent. Therefore, urokinase-type plasminogen activator appears to be a reliable marker for the formation of metastases in prostatic carcinoma.
Primary cultures of renal cell carcinomas and of the corresponding normal adjacent kidney tissue from 6 patients were analyzed for the effects of exogenously added urokinase-type plasminogen activator on cell proliferation as compared to the effects of tissue type plasminogen activator, plasmin and dihydrocortisone. Cell proliferation was studied over a period of up to 5 days by measuring 3H-thymidine incorporation as well as cell viability and cell count; conditioned media of the cultures were also analyzed for their plasminogen activator and plasminogen activator inhibitor content. Addition of urokinase stimulated cell proliferation in a time and dose dependent fashion; after 3 days 3H-thymidine incorporation was significantly increased in malignant renal cells (188.3 +/- 28.7%), while it reached in normal renal cells approximately 130% of the 3H-thymidine incorporation of untreated cultures. Tissue-type plasminogen activator had no effect and plasmin decreased cell proliferation slightly while dihydrocortisone inhibited cell proliferation significantly (34.1 +/- 4.9%) in malignant cells. It is concluded that urokinase-type plasminogen activator itself exhibits a mitogenic effect also on primary cultures of renal cell carcinomas.
Urokinase-type (u-PA) and tissue-type plasminogen activator antigen (t-PA) as well as plasminogen activator-inhibitor activity were determined in seminal plasma and lysates of the respective spermatozoas in 67 ejaculate of males in infertile marriage without genito urinary pathology. U-PA was determined by a competition RIA, t-PA by an ELISA and PAI by a spectrophotometric assay. 15 patients showed normozoospermia, 11 azoospermia and 41 oligoasthenoteratozoospermia (OAT-syndrome). In lysates of spermatozoas, significantly higher levels of both plasminogenactivators and PAI were found in patients with OAT syndrome as compared to those exhibiting normozoospermia. Whereas PAI was absent in the seminal plasma of normozoospermic ejaculate, patients with azoospermia (180 +/- 13 mU/ml.) and OAT-syndrome (60 +/- 5 mU/ml.) showed high PAI levels. The similarly high values of t-PA (190.8-227.8 ng./ml.) and u-PA (19.4-32 ng./ml.) in the same compartment confirm their predominantly prostatic origin and seem to have no influence on the quality of the ejaculate.
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