Based on present literature a short summary on different abnormalities of von Willebrand factor (VWF) activity and the laboratory diagnosis of the von Willebrand disease is given in this work. The activity of this protein is highly dependent on its multimer structure. We applied quantitative densitometric analysis after separation of VWF multimers by SDS-agarose gel electrophoresis and Western immunoblot to quantify the multimeric pattern. We found that the combination of these methods is appropriate to detect quantitative differences between small, medium and large multimers. We recommend our methodology for an efficient characterization of von Willebrand multimer distribution.
Keywords: von Willebrand factor, laboratory diagnosis, electrophoresis, immunoblotting, densitometry