Recent Advances in Blood Coagulation

Abstract

This volume contains 14 chapters, each with different authorship, on various aspects of the clotting mechanisms and its abnormalities. Of the 20 authors, half are from Great Britain and Ireland. The first two chapters, Biochemistry of Blood Coagulation (Baugh and Hougie) and Activation and Interaction of Some Defense Systems (Stormorken), give a good overview of the field, with most recent references being to 1975 articles. The reader gets a good description of the discovery of the calcium-binding function of the novel amino acids γ-carboxyglutamic acid, in the vitamin K— dependent procoagulants, prothrombin, and factors VII, IX, and X; the newer procoagulants, concerned with the early phase of clotting, prekallikrein, and high-molecular-weight kininogen, are discussed. The evidence demonstrates that the products of the early contact stages of the so-called intrinsic system of clotting, including factor XII and the kallikrein-kinin system, trigger not only the interaction of the antihemophilia factors VIII and