Dynamics of Individual Red Blood Cells Under Shear Flow: A Way to Discriminate Deformability Alterations.

ABSTRACT: In this work, we compared the dynamics of motion in a linear shear flow of individual red blood cells (RBCs) from healthy and pathological donors (Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) or Sickle Cell-β-thalassemia) and of low and high densities, in a suspending medium of higher viscosity. In these conditions, at lower shear rates, biconcave discocyte-shaped RBCs present an unsteady flip-flopping motion, where the cell axis of symmetry rotates in the shear plane, rocking to and fro between an orbital angle ±ϕ observed when the cell is on its edge. We show that the evolution of ϕ depends solely on RBC density for healthy RBCs, with denser RBCs displaying lower ϕ values than the lighter ones. Typically, at a shear stress of 0.08 Pa, ϕ has values of 82 and 72° for RBCs with average densities of 1.097 and

SUBMITTER: Atwell S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8767062 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature