Fibronectin modulates the activation of human platelets

In this paper we studied the effect of plasma fibronectin on platelet responsiveness to low doses of thrombin or ADP. Fibronectin causes: (i) a significant lowered cytoplasmic calcium movement in platelets activated both with low doses of thrombin and with ADP, (ii) a lowered decrease of the cAMP level induced by low thrombin, but not by ADP, (iii) a dramatic decrease of protein phosphorylation in low thrombin-treated platelets. The results reported here demonstrate that plasma fibronectin behaves like an inhibitor of mild activations of human platelets; its effect is probably mediated by the glycoprotein llb-llla complex in thrombin activated platelets, whereas a different and unknown mechanism must be supposed to explain the results obtained with ADP-activated platelets.