Demonstration of hepatic heparin-releasable lipase in the guinea-pig.

It was recently reported by Yamada et al. (Yamada, N., Murase, T., Akanuma, Y., Ikakura, H. and Kosaka, K. (1979) Biochim. Biophys. Acta 575, 128-134) that the guinea-pig has no hepatic heparin-releasable lipase. We have, however, found a low but definite lipase activity in guinea-pig post-heparin plasma with the characteristics of the hepatic lipase. This activity, as measured in our assay, is only about one-tenth of that in rat post-heparin in plasma. Although the activity is thus much lower than in some other animals, its presence demonstrates that the guinea-pig is not qualitatively but only quantitatively different in this respect.