The Journal of laboratory and clinical medicine
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Intestinal ischemia necessitates rapid re-establishment of blood flow to prevent irreversible anoxic tissue damage. However, reperfusion results in additional injury as a consequence of the generation of oxygen free radicals. To date, no clear-cut marker to differentiate between ischemia versus reperfusion injury is available. ⋯ In both experimental models, there was no change in any enzyme activity with warm ischemia alone. In contrast, alkaline phosphatase activity was significantly decreased in both the canine and human reperfusion models, with no change in specific activities of sucrase, maltase, and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase. Our data indicate that the alkaline phosphatase enzyme activity may represent a potential marker of intestinal reperfusion injury and may permit quantitative assessments of therapeutic interventions in human intestinal reperfusion injury.