Pepsins of Patients with Peptic Ulcer

Abstract

THE proteolytic activity of gastric juice and of gastric mucosal extracts from most patients with proven gastric or duodenal ulceration differs from that of most normal subjects, as judged by the respective proteolytic pH-activity curves¹. Agar gel electrophoresis of gastric juice is a sensitive means of detecting the individual pepsins responsible for this activity. In normal gastric juice, eight zones of proteolytic activity may be detected, but not all of the responsible enzymes are present in every subject². One of these enzymes, pepsin 1, seems to be more prominent in some patients with peptic ulcer than in normal subjects³. I now record the frequency of occurrence of the individual gastric proteinases in patients with gastric and duodenal ulceration, and demonstrate that one of them, pepsin 1, is increased in comparison with the known frequency in normal subjects⁴.