The impact of endothelium-derived nitric oxide on RBC aggregation studied in vitro by laser tweezers

Abstract

Red blood cells (RBC) play one of the key roles in blood microrheology which is mainly defined by two processes in which RBCs involved. RBC aggregation determines blood viscosity, while RBC deformability and adhesion to endothelium impacts both vessel resistance to the blood flow and viscosity. Alterations of RBC aggregation, deformability and their adhesion to the endothelial cells may cause negative consequences in number of diseases such as type 2 diabetes, arterial hypertension and sickle cell anemia. In turn, RBC properties depend on various factors, one of which is concentration of signaling molecules in the blood. One of such molecules is nitric oxide (NO) which is mainly produced by endothelial cells via endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) enzyme in circulatory system. The only substrate of this reaction is L-arginine amino acid. There are multiple data suggesting that NO increases deformability and reduces aggregation of RBC. Thus, study of NO, RBC and endothelium interplay represents both fundamental and clinical interest. The main goal of this work was to study RBC aggregation and adhesion to endothelium at different NO conditions using the laser tweezers in vitro. Our results show statistically significant decrease in RBC aggregation in the samples with endothelium preincubated with L-arginine in comparison with ones without L-arginine. Basing on the obtained data we can conclude that there is no need in L-arginine extracellular concentration during measurements for effective NO production by endothelium. No significant alterations of RBC adhesion to endothelium were obtained. These results improve our understanding of RBC-NO-endothelium interplay.

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Maksimov Matvei Konstantinovich
M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow
Russia

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