Content area
Full text
Received Dec 3, 2017; Accepted Feb 26, 2018
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Platelet rich plasma (PRP) is concentrate of platelets from autologous blood. Growth factors (GFs) including PDGF (platelet derived growth factor), VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor), FGF (basic fibroblast growth factor), EGF (epidermal growth factor), IGF (insulin-like growth factor), and TGF-β1 (transforming growth factor β1) are released from the alpha granules of concentrated platelets activated by coagulants [1–3]. Platelet derived GFs are not only known to enhance recruitment, proliferation, and differentiation of cells, but also thought to play a role in angiogenesis and inflammation. PRP has been used in various surgical procedures and clinical treatments, especially in the field of plastic surgery and dermatology, due to its effects of promoting wound healing, grafted fat survival, and hair growth [4–7].
Thus far, the preparation method of PRP has been reported in several articles with different procedures. Although the yield and vitality of platelets vary in different preparation procedures, the typical preparation and application procedure of PRP are common. First, anticoagulants such as ACD-A (anticoagulant citrate dextrose solution, solution A) is added to the whole blood for anticoagulation [8–13]. Second, coagulants such as calcium gluconate and thrombin are added to activate PRP [14–17]. However, these exogenous additives may have side effects in clinical setting. For example, sodium citrate may cause aggregation of platelets, resulting in inaccurate platelet counts that impact the clinical outcome [12, 18, 19]. Meanwhile, xenogeneic thrombin and other coagulants may trigger immunogenic reactions [20, 21]. On the other hand, due to the presence of anticoagulants, an additional thrombin mixing and spraying kit were further required after using a commercial PRP preparation kit, during the PRP application, especially in wound repair. The use of these commercial kits will undoubtedly increase the clinical cost of PRP. To ensure clinical effectiveness and availability, less exogenous substances are preferable when applying PRP in the clinical setting. Therefore, it would be ideal to prepare PRP without any requirement for additives.
Herein, we report a novel method of PRP preparation-activation, by which the coagulation was inhibited previously in...