An assay for the antithrombotic activity of anticoagulants.

Anticoagulants have been used for 20 years for the treatment of thrombosis. This practice has been based on the original experiments of Pupini (1932), Murray, Jaques, Perrett, and Best (1937), and Dale and Jaques (1942) which showed that anticoagulants could prevent the formation of experimental thrombi in dogs. There has been, however, no method reported by which it is possible to produce thrombosis in small animals for rapid assessment of the incidence of the lesion with different treatments. Such a method would be of value both to assess the relative activity of different anticoagulants in preventing thrombosis and also to make possible the quantitative experimental study of factors affecting thrombus formation in vivo. The present study was undertaken with this purpose and describes a simple method which appears to attain these objectives.