[Hypercoagulable state in Duchenne muscular dystrophy].

Pulmonary and cerebral infarctions have come to be noticed as life-threatening complications of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). In order to elucidate the underlying mechanism of hypercoagulable state, was studied following markers of coagulation and fiblinolysis in 69 DMD and 50 control patients showing no signs of thrombosis: prothrombin time, activated partial thrombin time, thrombotest, fibrinogen, fibrinogen degradation product, thrombin-antithrombin III complex (TAT), alpha 2-plasmin inhibitor plasmin complex (PIC), D-dimer, protein C activity, protein S, antithrombin III, XII factor, thrombomodulin and plasminogen activity. 66 out of 69 patients (96%) showed abnormal results in more than one of these studies, among which abnormally low thrombotest (78%), high TAT (61%) and high PIC (40.3%), were very frequently observed. The results were not correlated to the age, the activity of daily living and the respiratory of cardiac functions. Significantly smaller number of the control patients suffering from other neuromuscular diseases showed abnormal results, while the ambulatory DMD patients not infrequently showed hypercoagulable state. These results strongly suggest that unknown inherent factor(s) as well as inevitable immobilization and cardiac dysfunction play(s) an important role in the development of hypercoagulable state in this intractable disorder.