Isolation and purification of fibrinogen/fibrin degradation products by chromatography on protamine-agarose

Protamine-agarose chromatography is introduced as a rapid and efficient method for the isolation of fibrinogen/fibrin degradation products from biological fluids such as human plasma. All fibrinogen/fibrin fragments above a MW of 35000, including fragments D and E are quantitatively adsorbed to insolubilized protamine and can be eluted with a buffer containing 0.2 M sodium citrate/citric acid pH 5.3, following previous elution of non-fibrinogen proteins with a buffer containing 0.8 M NaCl at neutral pH. Fragments D and E are separated by stepwise elution. The efficiency of the method is - evaluated by applying it to plasma samples obtained from healthy donors and from patients with clinical and laboratory evidence of disseminated intravascular coagulation.