AFM as a tool to evaluate the risk for cardiovascular diseases in patients.

AFM as a tool to evaluate the risk for cardiovascular diseases in patients. Ann Med. 2018;50(sup1):S1-S9 Authors: Guedes AF, Sargento L, Braz-Nogueira J, Lousada N, Moreira C, Carvalho FA, Santos NC Abstract Erythrocyte aggregation is an indicator of cardiovascular risk, which is influenced by plasma fibrinogen concentration. Fibrinogen levels are elevated during cardiovascular diseases. Our main goals were to understand how fibrinogen-erythrocyte binding influences erythrocyte aggregation and how it constitutes a cardiovascular risk factor in essential arterial hypertension (EAH) and chronic heart failure (CHF). Fibrinogen-erythrocyte and erythrocyte-erythrocyte adhesion measurements were conducted by atomic force microscopy (AFM)-based force spectroscopy. Upon increasing fibrinogen concentration, there was an increase in the work and force necessary for cell-cell detachment, both for healthy donors and EAH patients. Nevertheless, higher values were obtained for the EAH patients at each fibrinogen concentration. Fibrinogen-erythrocyte (un)binding forces were higher in EAH and CHF patients, when compared with the control group, despite a lower binding frequency. Ischemic CHF patients showed increased binding forces compared to non-ischemic 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...
Source: Annals of Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Tags: Ann Med Source Type: research