The indicated size must be used with caution, as the estimate may be affected by glycosylations and rely further

on the relative selleck chemicals shapes of the protein under study compared with the standard proteins used for calibration. The finding of all of MASP-1 in large complexes is still in line with the earlier suggestion, at a time when ficolin-MASP interactions were not known by us [27] and others [30], that much of the MASPs and MAps in serum are not associated with MBL. From birth at term and during the following 3 months there was an increase in MASP-1, but in general a level quite similar to the level after 12 months, and indeed adult levels, were seen (Fig. 5). None were below 3 µg/ml at delivery. This indicates that whatever the function of MASP-1, one may regard the newborn as probably having sufficient quantities. An issue when comparing samples between different groups of patients is the possible variation of the parameters over time. In general, measurements on samples obtained sequentially from four apparently healthy volunteers through a 50-day period showed only minor variations (Fig. 4). This stable level makes it possible

to compare MASP-1 concentrations in samples taken at various time-points, although the situation may be different in some patient populations. Conversely, measurements on samples retrieved during Olopatadine an acute-phase response, induced by a major operation, showed that MASP-1 was rapidly down-regulated and subsequently up-regulated for some time following click here the operation (Fig. 6). The increase happened slowly, roughly 3 days after the peak of the

CRP response, and reached levels only approximately twice that of the pre-operation sample. We do not know if the colon cancer by itself has an influence on the pre-operation MASP-1 levels, and it is possible that a greater response may be induced by infections. A possible acute-phase response must thus be taken into account when studying data sets from patients. A puzzling early finding was that the levels of MASP-1 determined in heparin plasma were higher than in the corresponding serum, citrate plasma or EDTA plasma (Fig. 2). We can offer no explanation for this observation, but it may have to do with interference by the interaction of enzyme inhibitors in serum because, e.g. anti-thrombin-III in complex with heparin is known to bind and inhibit MASP-1 much better than without heparin [13]. For comparison of samples in routine analyses it is thus important to not compare heparin plasma values directly with serum values. A much smaller, but significant, difference between serum and EDTA plasma levels was also indicated. We did not see a strong correlation between serum levels of MASP-1, MASP-3 and MAp44 (Fig. 7).