Affiliations: Laboratory of Biomedical Engineering, University of Patras, Patras, Greece 261 10
Abstract: Erythrocyte (RBC) deformability is one of the major determinants of the ability of the RBC to pass repeatedly through the microcirculation as it influences the tissue oxygenation and the life span of the RBC. It is well known that a decrease in RBC deformability leads to some pathologies. The purpose of this study was to measure the rigidity (the inverse of the RBC deformability) of RBC from patients with Myelodysplastic (MDS) and β-Thalassemic (ThS) Syndromes in comparison with the normal ones, as determined by their filterability. Furthermore these results were compared with those obtained by the micropipette method. The filtration measurements were made with a filtration device called Hemorheometer, based on the initial flow rate principle. In these experiments the rigidity index (IR) of 23 samples from patients with MDS (in different subtypes) of 16 samples from patients with ThS (homozygous and heterozygous) and of 10 healthy subjects was measured. From these findings, it is concluded that the mean value of IR is very significantly increased in patients with MDS and ThS as compared with healthy individuals (p<0.01). This finding correlates well with previous studies, where the deformability of the RBC membrane in patients with the same diseases was measured with the micropipette method. In those studies the elastic shear modulus, μ, which determines the rigidity of RBC membrane, was very significantly increased in all patients. Comparison of these findings suggests a possible relationship between IR and μ, which in the reported case is: IR = 3.77 + 1.165μ (r = 0.9314, p-value = 0.001).
