Appropriate milieu for the assay of alpha-2-antiplasmin activity with chromogenic substrates

Inhibition reference curves for alpha 2-antiplasmin showed a deviation from linearity at low inhibitor concentrations using the chromogenic substrate S-2251. Extrapolation of these curves to zero inhibition gave higher amidolytic activities than actually recorded with the free enzyme plasmin. It was further found that comparison of purified alpha 2-antiplasmin and that in plasma was prevented by the deviation. The difference between calculated and measured plasmin activity could not be attributed to instability of plasmin. It was established that the observations (1) were specific for high concentrations of S-2251, (2) were not the same with another plasmin substrate, chromozym PL, and (3) were related to the addition of plasma proteins. Apparently, the problem was related to the solubility state of S-2251. A solution to this problem is the addition of nonionic detergents, notably Tween 80 (0.01%) or Triton X-100 (0.03%), which prevent all deviations.