Affiliations: School of Mechanical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea | Department of New Materials, SUNY at Stony Brook, NY, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: Sehyun Shin, PhD, Professor and Director, Green Nanotechnology Center, School of Mechanical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea. E-mail: lexerdshin@korea.ac.kr
Abstract: Red blood cell (RBC) deformability is greatly affected by the osmolality, and maximum deformability, which is determined as maximal elongation index (EImax), is usually observed in isotonic conditions at high shear stresses (>20 Pa). Therefore, we examined osmotic RBC deformability over a range of shear stresses (0.5–20 Pa). We found that the RBC deformability at low shear stresses (1–3 Pa) was maximum in hypotonic conditions (225–250 mOsm/kg H2O), which is slightly lower than the normal range of osmolality in plasma (290–310 mOsm/kg H2O). The phenomenon that Omax (the osmolality at EImax) is dependent on applied shear stress could play an important role in microcirculation in which osmolality varies widely.
Keywords: RBC, deformability, osmolality, shear stress, in vivo
