An assay procedure using three different methods to recover lipoprotein lipase (LPL) activity from biopsy specimens of human adipose tissue has been developed. Elution of enzyme from small pieces of tissue was performed at 4 and 37 degrees C using a physiological buffer containing heparin and serum. Extraction of enzyme from a tissue homogenate was carried out in the presence of detergent (sodium deoxycholate and Nonidet P-40), which markedly improved the recovery of enzyme activity. It is suggested that elution at 4 degrees C represents extracellular enzyme activity only and therefore theoretically is the closest measure of physiologically active LPL on vascular endothelium, whereas elution at 37 degrees C, in addition, reflects some intracellular enzyme secreted during the incubation period. In female subjects of various relative body weights activity eluted at 37 degrees C as well as detergent-extracted activity were highly correlated with the extracellular activity eluted at 4 degrees C (r = 0.9). Furthermore, all three parameters correlated strongly with LPL activity in post-heparin plasma, suggesting that they are valid indices of physiologically active LPL. The regression of LPL activity in plasma after a 60-min heparin infusion on adipose tissue LPL yielded higher correlation coefficients for activities recorded after elution at 4 and 37 degrees C (r = 0.725 and 0.754, respectively) than for detergent extraction (r = 0.607). Moreover, the increment of adipose tissue LPL after feeding was approximately twice as high for the activity eluted at 4 and 37 degrees C (34%) as for detergent-extracted activity (19%).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)