Affiliations:
Dipartmento Biomedico di Medicina Interna e Specialistica, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Prof Gregorio Caimi, Past President of the Italian Society for Clinical Hemorheology and Microciculation, Dipartmento Biomedico di Medicina Interna e Specialistica, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Via del Vespro, 127 90129 Palermo, Italy. Tel.: +390916554406; Fax: +390916554535; E-mail: [email protected].
Note: [1] The manuscript is dedicated to Prof. F. Jung on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
Abstract: The aim of this study was the evaluation of the erythrocyte deformability in multiple myeloma (MM). We enrolled 29 MM patients and we evaluated, on fasting venous blood, the erythrocyte deformability, expressed as elongation index, and examined using the diffractometric method. By comparing normal controls and MM patients, a significant decrease in erythrocyte deformability, especially at low shear stresses, was found. In this research paper we evaluated all the hypothesis for a possible explanation of the behaviour of red blood cell deformability in MM, even considering how the alteration of erythrocyte deformability worsens the microcirculatory flow in these patients in association with the marked increase in plasma viscosity.
