Decreased antithrombin III activity in diabetes may be due to non-enzymatic glycosylation--a preliminary report.

Antithrombin III activity was moderately but significantly decreased in insulin dependent diabetics (p less than 0.005), while no difference has been found between the diabetic (n = 25) and control groups (n = 22) in antithrombin III plasma concentration. Moreover, antithrombin III activity was inversely correlated with glycosylated plasma proteins (r = 0.57; p less than 0.01). These data show that in diabetes there is a depressed biological activity of antithrombin III and suggest that this reflects nonenzymatic glycosylation of antithrombin III protein.