Dissociation of the aggregating effect and the inhibitory effect upon cyclic adenosine monophosphate accumulation by adrenaline and adenosine diphosphate in human platelets.

Recent evidence indicates that adrenaline and adenosine diphosphate each have separate stimulus-response pathways for induction of aggregation and inhibition of cAMP accumulation. We have used a natural model to test the validity of this evidence, i.e. patients from two kindreds with an inherited bleeding disorder due to absent aggregation to adrenaline and no secondary wave response to large concentrations of adenosine diphosphate. Our studies showed that the inhibitory effect of adrenaline and adenosine diphosphate on PGE1-induced increase of cAMP in the patients was not different from that of the controls both for adrenaline and adenosine diphosphate. These results therefore support the present evidence that both adrenaline and adenosine diphosphate apply separate pathways in these two platelet functions.