Heat Inactivation in the Study of Human Alkaline Phosphatases

Abstract

OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, several at-tempts have been made to identify the sources of human serum alkaline phos-phatase (or phosphatases) by immunologi-cal (1), electrophoretic (2-4), or chemical (5) techniques. The methods employed are frequently too cumbersome for routine clinical use, while the results in many in-stances fail to answer whether, in a given patient, alkaline phosphatase is of hepatic, bony, or other origin. Indeed, some work-ers (6) have doubted the existence of con-sistent qualitative differences between the serum enzyme of patients with skeletal dis-orders and that of patients with hepatic disease and have attributed serum alkaline