The unfolding of human plasma alpha 1-acid glycoprotein (AGP) induced by heat or guanidine hydrochloride was studied under equilibrium conditions. In thermal unfolding, an intermediate state was detected by the appearance of unusual positive difference absorption bands in the 287-295-nm region, which occurred at lower temperatures than the common denaturation bands at 284 and 291 nm. The formation of this intermediate species apparently involves a local conformational change that perturbs the environment of tryptophyl residues, without affecting the secondary structure of the protein as judged from circular dichroism spectra. On the other hand, denaturation of the glycoprotein induced by guanidine hydrochloride seemed to follow a two-state model with no evidence of any intermediate species; however, the analysis of the transition curve indicated that the change in the accessibility to solvent of amino acid residues of AGP upon unfolding is significantly lower than those observed for other proteins. According to these results, it is proposed that part of the polypeptide chain in native AGP, namely, that from residue 122 to the C-terminus, may be "loosely" folded.