There are a variety of conditions which have been associated with prolonged bleeding times. If other etiologies including von Willebrand's disease have been ruled out, a platelet function disorder must be considered. The best, if not only, technique to make this diagnosis is the electron microscopic evaluation of whole air dried platelets. Bull first described the presence of dense granules in whole platelets in 1968 and the technique has been utilized extensively The electron dense or delta granules are easily distinguished from the larger more numerous alpha granules which are electron lucent. The significance of the dense granules is that they are known to be “storage pools” of serotonin, calcium, adenosine di- and triphosphate, and pyrophosphate. Prolonged bleeding times may be directly related to an insufficiency of these substances. The diagnosis of a storage pool deficiency is made when either the storage content of the dense granules is abnormal or their number is diminished. We observe normal platelets to have 4-6 dense granules, which agrees with the literature.
An epidemiological study on the dietary ingestion of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and platelet function in Japanese.