Abstract
Microfluidic devices have been widely used as a valuable research tool for diagnostic applications. Particularly, they have been related to the successful detection of different diseases and conditions by assessing the mechanical properties of red blood cells (RBCs). Detecting deformability changes in the cells and being able to separate those cells may be a key factor in assuring the success of detection of some blood diseases with diagnostic devices. To detect and separate the chemically modified RBCs (mimicking disease-infected RBCs) from healthy RBCs, the present work proposes a microfluidic device comprising a sequence of pillars with different gaps and nine different outlets used to evaluate the efficiency of the device by measuring the optical absorption of the collected samples. This latter measurement technique was tested to distinguish between healthy RBCs and RBCs chemically modified with glutaraldehyde. The present study indicates that it was possible to detect a slight differences between the samples using an optical absorption spectrophotometric setup. Hence, the proposed microfluidic device has the potential to perform in one single step a partial passive separation of RBCs based on their deformability.
Highlights
IntroductionMicrofluidic devices have been widely reported to perform blood separation experiments [1,2,3,4,5]
Microfluidic devices have been widely reported to perform blood separation experiments [1,2,3,4,5].Some diseases, such as malaria, diabetes mellitus, and sickle cell disease influence the red blood cells’ (RBCs) stiffness and, their deformability [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]
Experimental setup, and materials used in the procedures for evaluating RBC separation
Summary
Microfluidic devices have been widely reported to perform blood separation experiments [1,2,3,4,5]. Some diseases, such as malaria, diabetes mellitus, and sickle cell disease influence the red blood cells’ (RBCs) stiffness and, their deformability [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]. Malaria is a parasitic disease with more than half of the world’s population at risk that causes around 500 thousand deaths per year, with 80% of infections occurring in children under five years old. It has been shown that blood behaves as a single phase, homogeneous fluid or a multiphase, non-homogeneous fluid [17,18].
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