The Usefulness of an Inflammation Meter to Detect the Presence of Infection/Inflammation in Elderly Patients

Abstract

Background. Medical personnel who work in small geriatric institutions most frequently do not have access to realtime laboratory facilities.

Sex differences in the expression of haemorheological determinants in individuals with atherothrombotic risk factors and in apparently healthy people

“…The resulting degree of cell adhesiveness/aggregation is probably a summarised effect of these proteins on the tendency of the cells to adhere to each other and aggregate. We have already shown that enhanced red blood cell adhesiveness/aggregation correlates significantly with the presence of enhanced fibrinogen concentrations 25 and with the degree of the patient's inflammatory response, 26 that it can be induced by the intravenous infusion of immunoglobulins, 27 and that it is abolished by plasmapheresis. 28 The possibility that there might be sex differences in the tendency of red blood cells to adhere to each other and aggregate has not been evaluated in a systematic way in the past.…”

Association of components of the metabolic syndrome with the appearance of aggregated red blood cells in the peripheral blood. An unfavorable hemorheological finding

“…Thus, the erythrocytes, which are kept in their native milieu, surrounded by the various sticky proteins, are used to sense the effect of this stickiness [32,33]. This is the essence of the ERYTHROSENSE methodology and has been repeatedly shown (although by using another way of measuring the degree of cell adhesiveness/aggregation) to correlate significantly with the degree of inflammation [34] as well as the markers of the acute-phase response [35,36]. Moreover, we have recently shown that the erythrocyte aggregation in our slide test corresponds to significant inter-erythrocyte cohesive forces as examined in a shear-dependent cell flow property analyzer [37].…”

The erythrocyte adhesiveness/aggregation test for the detection of an acute phase response and for the assessment of its intensity

“…The test is based on the observation that multiple acute phase response proteins are involved in the induction and/or maintenance of increased erythrocyte aggregability (Weng et al ., 1996). We have recently shown that a patient's erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) can be predicted with an acceptable degree of accuracy using this slide test (Rotstein et al ., 2001).…”

“…The present study is an extension of our previous work (Rotstein et al ., 2001). We now describe two models which support the notion that a reasonable estimate of the intensity of the humoral acute phase response can be obtained from the results of the EAAT.…”