The elastin peptide level (EP) and elastase-type activity (EA) were in
vestigated in 89 patients with different types of systemic vasculitis
(polyarteritis nodosa-14, non-specific aortoarteritis-33, temporal art
eritis-23 and thromboangiitis obliterans-18) and compared to the contr
ols: 31 patients with leg atherosclerosis and 12 aged subjects with no
evident vascular pathology. EP and EA levels in patients with thrombo
angiitis obliterans were significantly lower as compared to leg athero
sclerosis and the aged control group (p < 0.02 for EA, p < 0.05 for EP
). The increase of EP predominated in giant-cell arteritis as compared
to the other vasculitic groups (18/56 vs, 5/32, p < 0.05); EA in thes
e patients was the lowest. The activation of elastin degradation after
corticosteroid treatment was demonstrated by an increase of EP in tem
poral arteritis (p < 0.05) and of EA in thromboangiitis obliterans (p
< 0.03). We suggest that the determination of the above parameters of
elastin degradation may be helpful in the search for differences in me
chanisms of vascular damage between atherosclerosis and inflammatory v
ascular diseases.