The estimation and recovery of dextran sulphates in biological fluids.

The dextran sulphates resemble heparin in being active inhibitors of several different forms of biological activity, e.g., blood coagulation, serum complement activity, and certain enzyme systems (Walton, 1954). In each case the activity of the dextran sulphate appears to be dependent upon direct interaction with one or more protein components of the biological system under investigation. In fact, the interaction of certain varieties of dextran sulphates with specific plasma proteins has been utilized as a means of plasma fractionation (Oncley, Walton, and Cornwell, 1957). Work in this field has made it necessary to seek a simple method of assessing quantitatively the concentration of dextran sulphates of given physical and chemical characteristics in biological fluids and in some instances of recovering the dextran sulphate from these fluids. The general resemblance in chemical constitution and behaviour between the dextran sulphates and heparin suggested a survey of the published methods for the estimation and isolation of heparin to determine whether or not such methods were equally applicable to the estimation of dextran sulphates.