Bleeding disorders could one day be diagnosed by putting platelets through strength tests, researchers have proposed. Biomedical engineers from Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have devised a microfluidic testing ground where platelets can demonstrate their strength by squeezing two protein dots together. Imagine rows and rows of strength testing machines from a carnival, but very tiny. A platelet is capable of exerting forces that are several times larger, in relation to its size, than a muscle cells.
\nAfter a blood clot forms, it contracts, promoting wound closure and restoration of normal blood flow. This process can be deficient in a variety of blood clotting disorders. Previously, it was difficult to measure an individual platelet\u2019s contributions to contraction, because clots\u2019 various components got in the way.
\n\u201cWe discovered that platelets from some patients with bleeding disorders are \u2018wimpier\u2019 than platelets from healthy people,\u201d says Wilbur Lam, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine and in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. \u201cOur device may function as a new physics-based method to test for bleeding disorders, complementary to current methods.\u201d
\nThe first author of the paper is David Myers, an instructor at Emory\u2019s medical school. Lam is also a physician in the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, Children\u2019s Healthcare of Atlanta.
\nThe scientists infer how strong or wimpy someone\u2019s platelets are by measuring how far the protein dots move, taking a picture of the rows of dots, and then analysing the picture on a computer.
\nThe dots are made of fibrinogen, a sticky protein that is the precursor for fibrin, which forms a mesh of insoluble strands in a blood clot.
\nIn addition to detecting problems with platelet contraction in patients with known inherited disorders such as Wiskott Aldrich syndrome, Myers, Lam and colleagues could also see differences in some patients who had bleeding symptoms, but who performed normally on standard diagnostic tests.
\nThe researchers also used chemical tools to dissect the process of platelet contraction. They showed that inhibitors of Rho\/ ROCK enzymes shut down platelet contraction, but inhibitors of a related pathway, MLCK (myosin light chain kinase), did not. Individual platelet contraction could become an assay for development or refinement of blood thinning drugs, Lam says. <\/p>\n
Georgia Techhttp:\/\/tinyurl.com\/j8byzzg<\/link>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bleeding disorders could one day be diagnosed by putting platelets through strength tests, researchers have proposed. Biomedical engineers from Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have devised a microfluidic testing ground where platelets can demonstrate their strength by squeezing two protein dots together. Imagine rows and rows of strength testing machines from a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}