Neutrophil extracellular traps: neutrophil’s afterlife

This paper is a literature review on the origin, structure and functioning of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) that are released from neutrophils through NETosis, the kind of cell death. NETs are comprised of DNA, histones and neutrophil granule enzymes. As the result of the combination of all those components’ effects NETs play the key role in immunodefence, thrombosis and cancer progression. Due to procoagulant activity NETs act as the inducers of venous thrombosis and can be detected in thrombus and in plasma. The high levels of NETs concentrations in plasma are associated with thrombotic complications in trauma, infectious diseases and cancer. DNase decreases the incidence of thrombus and improve the results of thrombolysis in experiments. These results are seem to be very promising in clinical practice.