Valutazione dell’adesione di piastrine di cane a proteine della matrice extracellulare

Platelet adhesion is an initial, crucial and complex event for inhibiting blood loss upon vascular injury. Activation and adhesion of platelets also play a fundamental role in the development of thrombosis. Basically, adhesion is the reaction of cells sticking to an insoluble surface, but it is accompanied by different processes such as signal transducing and activating reactions inside the cells, spreading or shape change, release reaction and aggregation. Despite numerous studies on platelet adhesion in human, in veterinary medicine few of these have been realised. The aim of this work was to evaluate a method for adhesion of canine platelets on proteins from extracellular matrix. Results showed that canine platelets adhere in a good manner to immobilized fibrinogen and collagen. The adhesion to both substrates is dose and time-dependent and ADP, used as agonist, can potentiate this reaction. In conclusion, this test of adhesion applied to canine platelets reveals to be sensitive and versatile and could be useful for the study of the complex mechanisms involved in the activation and regulation of platelet functions and in a number of studies related to the diagnosis of clinically relevant platelet defects.