Revision of the Troponin T Release Mechanism from Damaged

from damaged heart tissue in patients with acute myo-cardial infarction. It is presumed that most cTnT is tightly bound and released following the degradation of myofibrils in necrotic cardiomyocytes, resulting in sustained increases in circulating cTnT. Evidence of a large irreversibly bound fraction is based on the inabil-ity to extract most cTnT from cardiac tissue in cold low-salt extraction buffers. METHODS: Here we examined in vitro extraction of cTnT from human cardiac tissue in serum at 37 °C. RESULTS: We found that over 80 % of the cTnT can be extracted from human cardiac tissue in 90 min using large volumes of human serum at 37 °C. The release ratio was highly dependent on the extraction volume andwas only 3 % if an equal volume of serum and hear