Spiky insight: How red blood cells deform

Digital holotomographic microscopy: Empa researcher Talia Bergaglio analyzes the changes in living red blood cells in real time. Image: Empa - Researchers have observed living red blood cells transforming into spiky "echinocytes" in real time when treated with high concentrations of ibuprofen using holotomographic microscopy and displayed them in 3D renderings. Blood is indeed "a juice of rarest quality." What the poet and natural scientist Goethe already suspected can now actually be visualized using innovative imaging techniques. One of these special features is the cell that occurs most frequently in the bloodstream: the erythrocyte. Trillions of these red blood cells make their way through the human body every minute. The fact that they do not always take on a round shape enables them to squeeze through the narrowest blood vessels to supply the most remote corners of our body with oxygen. However, some changes in the shape of erythrocytes are also typical of special changes in the environment: so-called echinocytes with spiny extensions similar to a sea urchin occur, for instance, in the case of burns, liver damage, or after contact with certain drugs.