Fig. 5.

The role of EDA-FN and FN-fibrin complexes in atherosclerosis. The released inflammatory agents during a disease are known to initiate the reactions of the coagulation cascade and formation of FN-fibrin complexes, which can be easily detected by agarose immunoblotting as a ladder of bands showing molecular masses from 750 to 2200 kDa (Fig. 2). The FN-fibrin complexes occurring in plasma may lead to hypercoagulability, thrombosis, and vessel occlusion [15, 42]. Moreover, the harmful inflammatory agents and age-related processes occurring in arteries provoke ECM remodeling [43], which results from release of ECM components including cellular FN bearing an EDA segment (Fig. 1b). EDA is known to play a significant role in the repair process and in atherosclerosis [9, 26–28].