Immunoreactive endothelin in human plasma, urine, milk, and saliva.

Using a highly sensitive radioimmunoassay, elevated plasma immunoreactive endothelin (ir-ET) levels were found in patients with diabetes mellitus (1.88 +/- 0.12 pmol/L, mean +/- SEM, n = 100), patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis (4.28 +/- 0.76 pmol/L, n = 14), patients with acute myocardial infarction (3.43 +/- 1.03 pmol/L, n = 6), and patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage (4.92 +/- 0.64 pmol/L, n = 14) (normal controls: 0.54 +/- 0.05 pmol/L, n = 19). ir-ET was also present in urine (2.1 +/- 0.3 pmol/L, n = 12), breast milk (6.8 +/- 1.6 pmol/L, n = 16), and saliva (2.0 +/- 0.2 pmol/L, n = 15) obtained from healthy subjects. Chromatography studies verify the identity of endothelin. Fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC) showed one peak in the normal plasma extract, three peaks in the plasma extracts from diabetic patients and patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis, three peaks in the urine extract, four peaks in the milk extract, and five peaks in the saliva extract. When the materials eluting in the void volume on FPLC of urine and saliva extracts were loaded onto a Sephadex G-25 column, the ir-ET was eluted in a higher molecular weight region. Incubation of endothelin-1, endothelin-2, and endothelin-3 in urine for 5 h showed that the total amount of ir-ET decreased to less than 30% of the initial levels, suggesting that endothelins are very unstable in urine.