Significance of Electrochemical Phenomena in Intravascular Thrombosis

Abstract

IT appears increasingly certain that vascular interfacial phenomena are critically involved in the development of intravascular thrombosis. However, comments on the role of the vessel wall in the maintenance of vascular homoeostasis are conspicuously absent in discussions of the subject. In a recent article by Macfarlane¹ it was suggested that foreign surfaces activate Factor XII, triggering the cascade of reactions involved in ‘physiologic clotting’. A series of experiments in this laboratory, including measurement of transmural ion fluxes², absorption and concentration of various important anions and cations by vessel wall cells and fibres^3,4, and measurement of the zeta potential in the electric double layer at the blood-intimal interface as shown by both electro-osmosis⁵ and streaming potential⁶ experiments, indicate that charge on the vessel wall is important in vascular homoeostasis.