Serum and plasma levels of FGF-2 and VEGF in healthy blood donors.

VEGF-A and FGF-2 are two angiogenic growth factors involved in the growth and invasion of solid tumours and haematological malignancies. They are also believed to play an important role in cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases. Several studies dealing with measurement of circulating FGF-2 and VEGF have been published during the last decade. We have studied the levels of FGF-2 and VEGF-A in serum and EDTA plasma from 80 healthy blood donors. The samples were analyzed using the most widely used and commercially available ELISAkits. There was no significant effect of age on any of the assays and no effect of sex on P-FGF-2, S-VEGF-A and P-VEGF-A. Using the 97.5th percentile we obtained the following reference values: P-FGF-2 < 6.4 ng/l; S-VEGF-A < 500 ng/l; P-VEGF-A < 80 ng/l. Separate gender based reference intervals were made for S-FGF-2 as women had significantly higher S-FGF-2 values. Reference values for S-FGF-2 were <4.0 ng/l (men) and <10.8 ng/l (women).