We characterize both the shear-rate dependence and the oxygen-tension dependence of the effective viscosity of sickle cell blood, and we assess the effect of the addition of increasing fractions of normal cells whose material properties are independent of oxygen tension, a scenario relevant to the treatment of sickle patients with blood transfusion. Here, we use a custom microfluidic system to investigate how the increase in the stiffness of individual cells leads to an increase in the shear stress required for the same fluid strain in a suspension of softer cells. However, it has remained unclear how single-cell changes propagate up to the scale of bulk blood effective viscosity. The pathology of sickle cell disease begins with the polymerization of intracellular hemoglobin under low oxygen tension, which leads to increased blood effective viscosity and vaso-occlusion.
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