A fast photometric assay for the determination of hirudin

Recombinant hirudin, a potent and specific thrombin inhibitor, is considered for anticoagulant therapy. Therefore we developed a fast and sensitive chromogenic assay for its determination in plasma. Samples can be assayed directly if aprotinin, Polybrene and urea are added to the reagent mixture. The influence of progressive inhibitors is excluded by a short incubation time. The samples (20 microliters) are diluted with 1 ml reagent mixture (0.2 M Tris, 0.025 M NaCl, pH 8.1, containing 0.833 M urea, 0.7 trypsin inhibitory units/ml aprotinin, 100 ng/ml Polybrene and 0.31 NIH units/ml bovine thrombin). After an incubation time of 1 min, 100 microliters Chromoyzm TH (Tos-Gly-Pro-Arg-pNA, 1.9 mM) is added. delta absorbance/min is linear at least up to 3 min. The calibration curve is linear up to at least 800 ng hirudin/ml plasma. The inter- and intraassay coefficient of variation in hirudin spiked normal plasma is below 5%. The detection limit is at 25 ng hirudin/ml. In plasma samples obtained from healthy subjects under hirudin therapy, a good correlation was found to the activated partial thromboplastin time (r = 0.89). In conclusion, we describe a fast and simple chromogenic substrate test to assay hirudin in plasma. Under assay conditions, the influence of endogenous thrombin inhibitors can be neglected.