Affiliations: Laboratory of Biological Chemistry, Medical School, University of Ioannina, 45110 Ioannina, Greece | Laboratory of Biomedical Engineering and Applied Biophysics, Department of Electrical and Computers Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Patission 42, 10682 Athens, Greece
Abstract: Treatment of human erythrocytes with micromolar concentrations of tert-butyl hydroperoxide causes changes in the physical properties of the cells as evidenced by decreased deformability. The deformability changes followed a lag period which was reciprocally related to the concentrations of hydroperoxide. Ascorbic acid was able to delay these changes or reverse them for a period of time. Oxidation of ascorbic acid was observed, under the same conditions, which was correlated to the ability of both oxy- and met-forms of haemoglobin to catalyse the oxidation of ascorbic acid by tert-butyl hydroperoxide. It seems likely that ascorbic acid acts both as inhibitor of the oxidative activation of haemoglobin, which leads to deformability changes and as substrate for the haemoglobin catalysed tert-butyl hydroperoxide decomposition.
Keywords: Red Cell Deformability, Tert-butyl hydroperoxide, Ascorbic acid, Human erythrocytes, Cell Transit Analyser
