Sera of patients suffering from inflammatory diseases contain group IIA but not group V phospholipase A 2

Abstract

During recent years, the high phospholipase A 2 (PLA 2) concentrations at sites of inflammation and in circulation in several life-threatening diseases, such as sepsis, multi-organ dysfunction and acute respiratory distress syndrome, has generally been ascribed to the non-pancreatic group IIA PLA 2. Recently the family of secreted low molecular mass PLA 2 enzymes has rapidly expanded. In some cases, a newly described enzyme appeared to be cross-reactive with antibodies against the group IIA enzyme. For this reason, reports describing the expression of group IIA PLA 2 during inflammatory conditions need to be reevaluated. Here we describe the identification of the PLA 2 activity in sera of acute chest syndrome patients and in sera of trauma victims. In both cases, the PLA 2 activity was identified as group IIA. This classification was based upon cross-reactivity with monoclonal antibodies against group IIA PLA 2 which do not recognize the recombinant human group V enzyme. Moreover, purification of the enzymatic activity from the two sera followed by N-terminal amino acid sequence analyses revealed only the presence of group IIA enzyme.