A 64-year-old man first developed ligneous conjunctivitis at the age of 58 years after right pulmonary resection because of suspected cancer; otherwise, he had been healthy. Since then, he began to suffer from various forms of chronic pseudomembranous mucositis. Laboratory tests demonstrated that he had 7.8 % of plasminogen activity and 5.9 % of the normal antigen level. Thus, he was diagnosed as having severe type I plasminogen deficiency, making him the third case in Japan. DNA sequencing and PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses revealed that this patient was a compound heterozygote of a G-to-A missense mutation (G266E) in exon VIII and a g-to-a mutation at the obligatory splicing acceptor site in intron 12 (IVS12-1g>a). These two mutations were confirmed to be novel. Molecular modeling and splice site strength calculation predicted conformational disorder(s) for the Glu266 mutant and a drastic decrease in splicing efficiency for intron 12, respectively. Western blot analysis demonstrated that the patient contained a small amount of the normal-sized plasminogen protein. Mass spectrometric analysis of the patient's plasminogen revealed a peptide containing the wild-type Gly266 residue and no peptides with mutations at Glu266. However, he had never suffered from thrombosis. Low levels of fibrinogen/fibrin degradation products (FDP), D-dimer, and plasmin-α2-plasmin inhibitor complex clearly indicated a hypo-fibrinolytic condition. However, his plasma concentration of elastase-digested crosslinked FDPs was 4.8 U/mL, suggesting the presence of an on-going plasmin(ogen)-independent "alternative" fibrinolytic system, which may protect the patient from thrombosis. The patient has been free from recurrence of ligneous conjunctivitis for approximately 2.5 years.
Keywords: Defective fibrinolysis; Ligneous conjunctivitis; Missense mutation; Plasminogen deficiency; Splicing defect; Systemic pseudomembranous mucositis.