The isoelectric focusing of creatine kinase variants: II. The heterogeneity of creatine kinase in human serum with normal and elevated catalytic concentrations.

An effective and reliable method for the quantitative estimation of creatine kinase-MB, creatine kinase-MM variants and mitochondrial forms of creatine kinase in serum is presented. The high resolving power of isoelectric focusing allows the use of tetrazolium salts and meldola blue for the quantitative measurement without interfering non-specific reduction. The addition of thiol compounds to the agarose medium increases the sensitivity of the method, due to the inhibition of sulfhydryl group oxidation, and prevents enzyme degradation, which is a possible cause of an artificial heterogeneity. Depending upon the type of muscle and the degree of cell damage, we found 3-4 creatine kinase-MM sub-bands in sera with activities below 80 U/l. At elevated creatine kinase activities 3-11 creatine kinase-MM sub-bands were found. The appearance of creatine kinase-MB in serum indicates that damage has occurred to certain organs, especially the cardiac muscle. An organ with moderate or massive cell damage could release, in addition to the sarcoplasmatic creatine kinase variants, other forms with more alkaline isoelectric points (mitochondrial creatine kinase). The presence of such bands in serum of patients correlates with poor prognosis. Besides the separation of creatine kinase-MM sub-bands, creatine kinase-MB, creatine kinase-BB and of macroforms 1 and 2, the advantage of this method is the detection of mitochondrial creatine kinase forms, which in cellulose acetate electrophoresis migrate with creatine kinase-MM.