Fig. 4: Blood coagulability parameters.
a, Platelet counts and coagulability markers for exposure to air (white); s-GO (blue); or us-GO (red). The dotted lines represent the expected upper and lower limits of normal values. The colour bars and error bars show the mean ± s.d. (n = 12 for air and us-GO groups, n = 11 for s-GO groups; biologically independent measurements). No significant differences were found between treatments (two-way analysis of variance followed by Tukey’s post hoc test). b, Schematic of the ex vivo thrombosis chamber set-up for measuring blood thrombogenicity. c, Photograph of the chamber containing the three strips of porcine artery (pink) with the direction of blood flow across the chamber marked. Low, low-shear chamber; High1, first high-shear chamber; High2, second high-shear chamber. d, Porcine strip (white) taken from the chamber with adhering blood (vertical red line) seen running down the centre of the strip. A corner of the strip is removed to identify the direction of blood flow. e, A representative histological section of the strip (pink) with blood (brown, arrow) adhering to the intimal surface. f, Inhalation of either s-GO (P = 0.02) or us-GO (P = 0.006) led to a greater blood thrombogenicity compared with air exposure in the low-shear chamber. A similar pattern was observed in the high-shear chamber, although the effect was only demonstrable for s-GO (P = 0.019; for us-GO, P = 0.07). There was no statistically significant difference in thrombogenicity between s-GO and us-GO. The central lines of the box plots show the median, box ranges show the 25–75th percentiles and whiskers show the minima (25th percentile − 1.5 × interquartile range) and maxima (75th percentile + 1.5 × interquartile range); each point represents a single section from the arterial strip. Biologically independent measurements are from 13 volunteers (low-shear chamber) and 8 volunteers (high-shear chamber). Comparisons with air were made by one-tailed Kruskal–Wallis tests. APTT, activated partial thromboplastin time; PT, prothrombin time.
