Hirudin is made by genetic engineering from the anticoagulant in the saliva of leeches, and it is being intensively studied in the hope that it will prove more effective than heparin.
22.
Participants received either heparin or hirudin along with drugs that can break up blood clots after they form, including streptokinase and TPA, and aspirin, which is also used to prevent clots.
23.
Bleeding time will vary, with location, from a few hours to three days . This is a function of the hirudin and other compounds that reduce the surface tension of the blood.
24.
In Topol's study, 26 of 2, 564 heart attack patients who received either hirudin or heparin suffered a stroke from bleeding in the brain, a rate of about 1 percent.
25.
A third study was conducted in Germany and was halted in June after researchers there, alerted to results of the two American based studies, found a similar risk of strokes among individuals receiving hirudin.
26.
1884 : John Berry Haycraft has been actively engaged in research and published papers on the coagulation of blood and in 1884, he discovers that the leech secretes a powerful anticoagulant, which he names hirudin.
27.
When Germany's legislature passed the Genetic Engineering Act last May to encourage biotechnology at home, Hoechst applied to make Hirudin out of baker's yeast, but ran into a logjam from local politicians.
28.
They use a combination of mucus and suction ( caused by concentric muscles in those six segments ) to stay attached and secrete an anti-clotting enzyme, hirudin, into the host's blood stream.
29.
Researchers used the larger doses of heparin and hirudin in the studies because they appeared safe in all the pilot studies and because some patients, particularly those who were overweight, apparently did not receive large enough amounts of heparin.
30.
Unlike thrombin, reptilase is resistant to inhibition by antithrombin III . Thus, the reptilase time is not prolonged in blood samples containing heparin, hirudin, or direct thrombin inhibitors, whereas the thrombin time will be prolonged in these samples.
