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Research
In vitro and ex vivo effect of hyaluronic acid on erythrocyte flow properties
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* Corresponding author: A Luquita luquitale@hotmail.com
1 Cátedra de Física Biológica, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Santa Fe 3100, 2000 Rosario, Argentina
2 Sección Inmunidad Celular, Department of Bioquímica Clínica, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Facultad de Cs. Bioquímicas y Farmacéuticas, Suipacha 531, 2000 Rosario, Argentina
3 Facultad de Bioquímica y Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL) and INTEC (CONICET-UNL), Güemes 3450, 3000 Santa Fe, Argentina
4 Área Reumatología, Cátedra de Reumatología, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Santa Fe 3100, 2000 Rosario, Argentina
Journal of Biomedical Science 2010, 17:8 doi:10.1186/1423-0127-17-8
Published: 12 February 2010Abstract
Background
Hyaluronic acid (HA) is present in many tissues; its presence in serum may be related to certain inflammatory conditions, tissue damage, sepsis, liver malfunction and some malignancies. In the present work, our goal was to investigate the significance of hyaluronic acid effect on erythrocyte flow properties. Therefore we performed in vitro experiments incubating red blood cells (RBCs) with several HA concentrations. Afterwards, in order to corroborate the pathophysiological significance of the results obtained, we replicated the in vitro experiment with ex vivo RBCs from diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, a serum HA-increasing pathology.
Methods
Erythrocyte deformability (by filtration through nucleopore membranes) and erythrocyte aggregability (EA) were tested on blood from healthy donors additioned with purified HA. EA was measured by transmitted light and analyzed with a mathematical model yielding two parameters, the aggregation rate and the size of the aggregates. Conformational changes of cytoskeleton proteins were estimated by electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy (EPR).
Results
In vitro, erythrocytes treated with HA showed increased rigidity index (RI) and reduced aggregability, situation strongly related to the rigidization of the membrane cytoskeleton triggered by HA, as shown by EPR results. Also, a significant correlation (r: 0.77, p < 0.00001) was found between RI and serum HA in RA patients.
Conclusions
Our results lead us to postulate the hypothesis that HA interacts with the erythrocyte surface leading to modifications in erythrocyte rheological and flow properties, both ex vivo and in vitro.