The effect of anesthetics and heat treatment on deformability and osmotic fragility of red blood cells

Abstract

The effect of a number of anesthetics on osmotic fragility and deformability of human red blood cells was studied. These anesthetics all protected erythrocytes against osmotic lysis. An indication of separate mechanisms of action of these anesthetics emerged from the effects on cell deformability. Chlorpromazine and the lower alcohols caused a clear decrease of cell deformability, whereas alcohols with a chain-length exceeding C = 4 had no effect on deformability. This indicates that these two effects are not interrelated. This conclusion was supported by the observation that heating of the cells to 48.8° for 4 min antagonized the effects of anesthetics on deformability, without modifying the protection against osmotic hemolysis. Heating of the cells to 48.8° caused an irreversible modification of some membrane proteins, in particular spectrin and bands 7 and 8 protein. These proteins exhibited an irreversible loss of extractability at low ionic strength. Thus it seems likely that the influence of anesthetics on cell deformability is mediated via a direct or indirect effect on one or more of the heat-affected proteins, whereas the protection against osmotic hemolysis is caused by a different drug-membrane interaction.