CHICAGO, June 30 (Xinhua) -- An international team of researchers has discovered that healthy red blood cells assemble into a two-dimensional crystal pattern whereas pathological red blood cells succumb to disorder.
The findings ignite the possibility of a novel diagnostics tool to detect blood pathologies in diseases such as sickle cell anemia, a disorder the World Health Organization has long identified as a prominent global health issue.
Through experiments and simulations, the researchers examined the common assumption of disordered blood flow, and found that a healthy red blood cell is rather soft and flexible. When red blood cells are hardened in diseases such as sickle cell anemia, however, that order is suppressed.
"Red blood cells have to constantly rearrange while blood is flowing through the body's network of blood vessels, and we discovered a new arrangement of the red blood cells' regular pattern in which they are lined in a chain-like formation," said Northwestern Engineering professor Petia Vlahovska.
Understanding red blood cell assemblies under flow is essential to deciphering many blood and cardiovascular pathologies, the main cause of mortality in the world.
The findings unlock a potential method to identify healthy and diseased red blood cells, which could be useful for diagnosis as well as therapeutic development.
"And that could impact millions of people around the globe," Vlahovska said.
The study was published in Physical Review Letters on June 28.
