New trends in coronary artery disease: the role of granulocyte activation.

Circulating granulocytes play an important role in microvascular perfusion and organ pathology. Oxygen radicals released by aggregated and activated neutrophils may exacerbate the tissue damage caused by ischemia. We studied neutrophil aggregation and oxygen metabolites release in 16 patients suffering from coronary artery disease and in 6 control subjects in aorta and coronary sinus blood samples. The neutrophil aggregation (P less than 0.01) and oxidase activity (P less than 0.01) are higher in coronary sinus than aorta samples only in the patients with respect to controls. While the superoxide generation is decreased in coronary sinus (P less than 0.05). Our aggregation assay supported the potential role of granulocytes in neutrophil-endothelial interactions and tissue damage, and our results about oxidase activity and superoxide release suggested the potential role for neutrophil-derived oxygen radicals in the pathogenesis of vascular injury in vivo.