• Christopher D Barrett, Peter K Moore, Ernest E Moore, Hunter B Moore, James G Chandler, Halima Siddiqui, Elizabeth R Maginot, Angela Sauaia, Angel Augusto Pérez-Calatayud, Keely Buesing, Jiashan Wang, Cesar Davila-Chapa, Daniel Hershberger, Ivor Douglas, Fredric M Pieracci, and Michael B Yaffe.
• Division of Acute Care Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE; Department of Cellular and Integrative Physiology, Department of Medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE. Electronic address: cbarrett@unmc.edu.
• Chest. 2024 May 6.

BackgroundComplex pleural space infections often require treatment with multiple doses of intrapleural tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) and deoxyribonuclease, with treatment failure frequently necessitating surgery. Pleural infections are rich in neutrophils, and neutrophil elastase degrades plasminogen, the target substrate of tPA, that is required to generate fibrinolysis. We hypothesized that pleural fluid from patients with pleural space infection would show high elastase activity, evidence of inflammatory plasminogen degradation, and low fibrinolytic potential in response to tPA that could be rescued with plasminogen supplementation.Research QuestionDoes neutrophil elastase degradation of plasminogen contribute to intrapleural fibrinolytic failure?Study Design And MethodsWe obtained infected pleural fluid and circulating plasma from hospitalized adults (n = 10) with institutional review board approval from a randomized trial evaluating intrapleural fibrinolytics vs surgery for initial management of pleural space infection. Samples were collected before the intervention and on days 1, 2, and 3 after the intervention. Activity assays, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, and Western blot analysis were performed, and turbidimetric measurements of fibrinolysis were obtained from pleural fluid with and without exogenous plasminogen supplementation. Results are reported as median (interquartile range) or number (percentage) as appropriate, with an α value of .05.ResultsPleural fluid elastase activity was more than fourfold higher (P = .02) and plasminogen antigen levels were more than threefold lower (P = .04) than their corresponding plasma values. Pleural fluid Western blot analysis demonstrated abundant plasminogen degradation fragments consistent with elastase degradation patterns. We found that plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI-1), the native tPA inhibitor, showed high antigen levels before the intervention, but the overwhelming majority of this PAI-1 (82%) was not active (P = .003), and all PAI-1 activity was lost by day 2 after the intervention in patients receiving intrapleural tPA and deoxyribonuclease. Finally, using turbidity clot lysis assays, we found that the pleural fluid of 9 of 10 patients was unable to generate a significant fibrinolytic response when challenged with tPA and that plasminogen supplementation rescued fibrinolysis in all patients.InterpretationOur findings suggest that inflammatory plasminogen deficiency, not high PAI-1 activity, is a significant contributor to intrapleural fibrinolytic failure.Trial RegistryClinicalTrials.gov; No.: NCT03583931; URL: www.Clinicaltrialsgov.Copyright © 2024 American College of Chest Physicians. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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