APOLIPOPROTEIN H AND CHOLESTEROL PART 2

I am sure you are all waiting with bated breath to find out how the APL Syndrome came about.

If you remember from my previous post, the laboratory was getting false positive results for syphilis tests, this means that the results were positive but the patient did not have syphilis.

In the early development of coagulation testing a reagent called, Cephalin was being used to speed up coagulation reactions.Cephalin is a phospholipid, this led to abnormailities that were associated with the presence of an anticoagulant in patients with systemic lupus and frequently together with syphilis test. This means that patients with lupus gave a false positive test for syphilis due to the phospholipids in Cephalin.

In 1983 with the development of another phospholipid called Cardiolipin which is the major reagent in the syphilis test, this finding led to a major step in the identification of this syndrome.

Now back to cholesterol, Atherosclerosis was acclerated in mice immunized with anticardiolipin antibodies from an APL syndrome patient(these mice had ldl receptors knocked out).

The antibodies associated with APL can come from different venues. One being cofactor independent antibodies to phospholipis triggered by an infection, also drugs such as procanamide can induce APL antibodies. Also these antibodies can be found in patients that are asymptomatic individuals, there are also patients that are at high risk for developing the disease APL but have not sero converted.

There are co factors that have been identified along with Apo H and these deal mainly with the clotting system.

As you can tell by the above information phospholipids and Apo H have roles that are multi tasked in maintaining hemostasis in the body.

APL antibodies may show cross reactivity against oxidized ldl and this can lead to a risk for atherosclerosis. What else bears mentioning is the impairment of the fibrinolytic system. This is the bodies ability to break down clots.Also, APL antibodies have been associated with increased susceptibility to coronary artery disease and in particular premature atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease appears to be associated with antibodies against oxidized ldl.

Stay Healthy