Anticoagulant activity of dermatan polysulfates.

It has been found that dermatan polysulfates (DPS) I, II and III isolated from hagfish notochord, hagfish skin and shark skin, respectively, and chemically sulfated dermatan sulfate exhibit considerable anticoagulant activity in the "activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT)" system. On comparing the activities with the various compositions, including disaccharide units produced by the digestion with chondroitinase-ABC, it was shown that the activity of these dermatan polysulfates depends not only on the total sulfate content but also on the content of sulfated L-iduronic acid residues. The activity seemed to decrease for molecular weight of below 10,000. The effect of these dermatan polysulfates on th inactivation of the clotting enzymes, factor Xa and thrombin, by antithrombin II (AT-III) was also studied using chromogenic substrates for the assay of the enzyme activities. The dermatan polysulfates showed an inhibitory effect on thrombin-AT-III, as estimated by the APTT assay, in contrast with the effect on factor Xa-AT-III which was found to be very small.