The method used in this study might be applied to clinical analysis of foot diseases such as the staging of flatfoot and to biomechanical analysis to evaluate the effects of foot surgery in the future.

An inhibitor of blood coagulation, a new protein with an apparent molecular weight of 34,000 and an isoelectric point of 4.9, was purified from human placental tissue by EDTA extraction. Five cDNA clones were isolated from the human placental lambda gt11 cDNA library using the mouse monoclonal antibody raised against the coagulation inhibitor as the probe. The longest insert consists of 1,566 nucleotides, and contains 960 nucleotides entirely encoding the 320 amino acids of the inhibitor, and a poly A tail. The deduced amino acid sequence was corroborated by chemical analyses of the protein. The entire amino acid sequence shows homology to those of lipocortin I, lipocortin II, and endonexin-related proteins. The cDNA for the inhibitor was expressed in Escherichia coli under the regulation of the trc promotor of the plasmid pKK233-2. The resulting recombinant protein manifested inhibitory activities against both blood coagulation and phospholipase A2 activity, as did the coagulation inhibitor isolated from human placenta.

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Throughout Japan a total of 543 cases of vitamin K deficiency occurring in infants over 2 weeks of age were reported from January 1981 to June 1985. Of these cases, 427 showed no obvious reasons for vitamin K deficiency; this sort of case is known as "idiopathic vitamin K deficiency in infancy". Another 57 cases had bleeding episodes due to vitamin K deficiency associated with obvious hepatobiliary lesions, chronic diarrhoea, long-term antibiotic therapy, etc; this sort is called "secondary vitamin K deficiency in infancy". The third group, consisting of 59 cases, was made up of the so-called "near miss" type, in which a haemorrhagic tendency, without any obvious clinical haemorrhage, was discovered by Normotest, at the time of mass screening in most cases. In the idiopathic group, 269 cases (63.0%) developed bleeding episodes between the 1st and 2nd months of age, and 387 cases (90.0%) were entirely breast-fed. Intracranial haemorrhage was observed in 353 cases (82.7%) of this group. Moreover, slight elevation of serum transaminase and direct type bilirubin levels were observed in the idiopathic group. Liver dysfunction of unknown origin may play some role in the onset of vitamin K deficiency in infancy.

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