Procoagulant activity in whole blood from patients with breast and colorectal cancer

Whole blood procoagulant activity was determined by measuring the endotoxin-induced shortening of the celite-activated whole blood recalcification time in patients with breast cancer (n = 29), colorectal cancer (n = 18), benign breast disease (n = 26), benign colorectal disease (n = 10), normal volunteers (n = 17) and surgical in-patients with non-malignant and non-inflammatory conditions (n = 18). Using this method, patients with breast and colorectal cancer produced significantly more procoagulant activity than normal controls (P less than 0.001), surgical in-patients (P less than 0.005) and patients with benign breast (P less than 0.001) and benign colorectal (P = 0.05) disease respectively. The difference between subjects classified as 'cancer' or 'non-cancer' was highly significant (P less than 0.0001). There were no significant differences in total white cell or absolute monocyte counts between subject groups, and in individual patients, there was no correlation between these parameters and the procoagulant activity. It is concluded that the activated whole blood recalcification time is a more reproducible way of measuring whole blood procoagulant activity than the original technique, and that using this method, patients with cancer show higher procoagulant activity than corresponding benign controls.