Journal Article

PreJuSER-15941

http://join2-wiki.gsi.de/foswiki/pub/Main/Artwork/join2_logo100x88.png Predicting human blood viscosity in silico

Fedosov, D. A.FZJ* ; Pan, W.FZJ* ; Caswell, B.FZJ* ; Gompper, G.FZJ* ; Karniadakis, G. E.FZJ*

2011
Academy Washington, DC

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Please use a persistent id in citations: doi:10.1073/pnas.1101210108

Abstract: The viscosity of blood has long been used as an indicator in the understanding and treatment of disease, and the advent of modern viscometers allows its measurement with ever-improving clinical convenience. However, these advances have not been matched by theoretical developments that can yield a quantitative understanding of blood's microrheology and its possible connection to relevant biomolecules (e.g., fibrinogen). Using coarse-grained molecular dynamics and two different red blood cell models, we accurately predict the dependence of blood viscosity on shear rate and hematocrit. We explicitly represent cell-cell interactions and identify the types and sizes of reversible rouleaux structures that yield a tremendous increase of blood viscosity at low shear rates. We also present the first quantitative estimates of the magnitude of adhesive forces between red cells. In addition, our simulations support the hypothesis, previously deduced from experiments, of yield stress as an indicator of cell aggregation. This non-Newtonian behavior is analyzed and related to the suspension's microstructure, deformation, and dynamics of single red blood cells. The most complex cell dynamics occurs in the intermediate shear rate regime, where individual cells experience severe deformation and transient folded conformations. The generality of these cell models together with single-cell measurements points to the future prediction of blood-viscosity anomalies and the corresponding microstructures associated with various diseases (e.g., malaria, AIDS, and diabetes mellitus). The models can easily be adapted to tune the properties of a much wider class of complex fluids including capsule and vesicle suspensions.

Keyword(s): Blood Viscosity (MeSH) ; Cell Adhesion: physiology (MeSH) ; Computer Simulation (MeSH) ; Humans (MeSH) ; Models, Biological (MeSH) ; Molecular Dynamics Simulation (MeSH) ; Rheology: methods (MeSH) ; J ; blood rheology (auto) ; blood modeling (auto) ; shear thinning (auto) ; aggregation force (auto) ; dissipative particle dynamics (auto)

Note: This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant R01HL094270 and simulations were performed on the Cray XT5 at the National Science Foundation-National Institute for Computational Science and at the Julich Supercomputing Center in Germany.

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Contributing Institute(s):

1. Theorie der weichen Materie und Biophysik (ICS-2)
2. Theorie der Weichen Materie und Biophysik (IAS-2)

Research Program(s):

1. BioSoft: Makromolekulare Systeme und biologische Informationsverarbeitung (P45)

Appears in the scientific report 2011

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