BACKGROUND: Lipoprotein lipase (LPL) is anchored at the vascular endothelium through interaction with heparan sulfate. It is not known how this enzyme is turned over but it has been suggested that it is slowly released into blood and then taken up and degraded in the liver. Heparin releases the enzyme into the circulating blood. Several lines of evidence indicate that this leads to accelerated flux of LPL to the liver and a temporary depletion of the enzyme in peripheral tissues. RESULTS: Rat livers were found to contain substantial amounts of LPL, most of which was catalytically inactive. After injection of heparin, LPL mass in liver increased for at least an hour. LPL activity also increased, but not in proportion to mass, indicating that the lipase soon lost its activity after being bound/taken up in the liver. To further study the uptake, bovine LPL was labeled with 125I and injected. Already two min after injection about 33 % of the injected lipase was in the liver where it initially located along sinusoids. With time the immunostaining shifted to the hepatocytes, became granular and then faded, indicating internalization and degradation. When heparin was injected before the lipase, the initial immunostaining along sinusoids was weaker, whereas staining over Kupffer cells was enhanced. When the lipase was converted to inactive before injection, the fraction taken up in the liver increased and the lipase located mainly to the Kupffer cells. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that there are heparin-insensitive binding sites for LPL on both hepatocytes and Kupffer cells. The latter may be the same sites as those that mediate uptake of inactive LPL. The results support the hypothesis that turnover of endothelial LPL occurs in part by transport to and degradation in the liver, and that this transport is accelerated after injection of heparin.