Arachidonic Acid Metabolism in Human Platelets

Arachidonic acid (20:4) is classified as “essential” for human nutrition since long-term ingestion of a diet deficient in this compound results in a disease entity (1). In mammals, arachidonate is either obtained from the diet or synthesized from another essential fatty acid, linoleic (18:2) by the process of chain elongation and desaturation. We first described the presence of 20:4 in human platelets in 1962 (2).