Apparent heterogeneous responsiveness of human platelet rich plasma to catecholamines

The platelet-rich plasma (PRP) from 35 healthy Korean volunteers were challenged by four catecholamines and clonidine, which were known as alpha-adrenergic agonists. Wide individual variations were observed with the respect to the pattern and the degree of aggregation in response to each agent. They fall into five distinct groups; Group A (2.9%) was responsive to all five agonists; Group B (28.6%) aggregated in response to (-)-epinephrine, (-)-norepinephrine and epinine; Group C (37.1%) aggregated in response to (-)-epinephrine and (-)-norepinephrine; Group D (11.4%) aggregated only by (-)-epinephrine; Group E (20%) showed impaired responsiveness to all the alpha-agonists tested. All of the non-responding PRP were capable of induction of aggregation in response to (-)-epinephrine, (-)-norepinephrine and epinine in the presence of near-threshold concentration of collagen. Variations were also observed between groups with dopamine and clonidine. Dopamine and clonidine failed to induce secondary aggregation, even in the presence of low concentration of collagen, in most of the PRP preparations belonging to Groups D and E and only slight improvements were observed in the preparations belonging to groups B and C. The observation on heterogeneous responsiveness to catecholamines with PRP of Korean volunteers is quite different from the previous report with PRP of presumably mostly Caucasians.