Ice-Binding Proteins - Not Only for Ice Growth Control

Abstract

Erythrocytes from non-ischemic patients presented higher stiffness than those from the other two groups. Nevertheless, a significantly higher cell penetration depth at the same applied force was observed for ischemic heart failure patients. Erythrocyte deformability (assessed as elongation index) results show that heart failure patients presented higher erythrocyte deformability than the control group at lower shear stresses, and lower deformability at higher shear stresses. This indicates that patients' erythrocytes are more deformable than those from healthy donors in blood vessels with larger internal diameters; however, in smaller-diameter vessels the opposite trend exists. Finally, a 12-month clinical follow-up shows that CHF patients with higher fibrinogen-erythrocyte binding forces, probed by AFM at the beginning of the assessment, had a significantly higher probability of being hospitalized due to cardiovascular complications on the subsequent year. Our results show that AFM can be a promising tool for clinical prognosis, pinpointing those patients with increased risk for cardiovascular diseases.