Determination of heparin in small tissue samples.

Abstract

The association of heparin and mast cells is on the basis of the metachromatic color change produced in toluidine blue. Among agents from biologic sources, heparin is the most effective in producing this change in a test tube. The mast cells are the most prominent components that show the changes in histologic sections. Many reports have been published on the amine components of mast cells-histamine and 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT). Although our studies in 1939 (1) showed that the symptoms of anaphylaxis in dogs were due to the release of both histamine and heparin from liver mast cells, biologic studies of heparin have not been as extensive as those of histamine and 5-HT after the original observation. That is because, although there have been methods for identifying and measuring both histamine and 5-HT in small tissue samples, there have been no corresponding procedures for heparin. A great deal of my research for the last 35 years has been directed at remedying this deficiency, and this I believe we have accomplished by microelectrophoresis (Fig. 1) (2, 4).