Medical Uses
When mixed with insulin, protamines slow down the onset and increase the duration of insulin action (see NPH insulin).
Protamine is used in cardiopulmonary bypass surgery to neutralize the anti-clotting effects of heparin as well as to increase pulmonary artery pressure and decrease peripheral blood pressure, myocardial oxygen consumption, cardiac output, and heart rate.
Protamine sulfate is an antidote for heparin overdose. A chain shortened version of protamine also acts as a potent heparin antagonist, but with markedly reduced antigenicity.
In gene therapy, protamine sulfate's ability to condense plasmid DNA along with its approval by the FDA have made it an appealing candidate to increase transduction rates by both viral and nonviral (e.g. utilizing cationic lipids) mediated delivery mechanisms.
Read more about this topic: Protamine
Famous quotes containing the word medical:
“As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“There may perhaps be a new generation of doctors horrified by lacerations, infections, women who have douched with kitchen cleanser. What an irony it would be if fanatics continued to kill and yet it was the apathy and silence of the medical profession that most wounded the ability to provide what is, after all, a medical procedure.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)