Erythrocyte lysis and angle-resolved light scattering measured by scanning flow cytometry result to 48 indices quantifying a gas exchange function of the human organism.

Molecular/cell level of gas exchange function assumes the accurate measurement of erythrocyte characteristics and rate constants concerning to molecules involved into the CO /O transport. Unfortunately, common hematology analyzers provide the measurement of eight indices of erythrocytes only and say little about erythrocyte morphology and nothing about rate constants of cellular function. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the ability of the Scanning Flow Cytometer (SFC) in the complete morphological analysis of mature erythrocytes and characterization of erythrocyte function via measurement of lysing kinetics. With this study we are introducing 48 erythrocyte indices. To provide the usability of application of the SFC in clinical diagnosis, we formed four categories of indices which are as follows: content/concentration (9 indices), morphology (26 indices), age (5 indices), and function (8 indices). The erythrocytes of 39 healthy volunteers were analyzed with the SFC to fix the first-ever reference intervals for the new indices introduced. The essential measurable reliability of the presented method is expressed in terms of errors of characteristics of single erythrocytes retrieved from the solution of the inverse light-scattering problem and errors of parameters retrieved from the fitting of the experimental kinetics by molecular-kinetics model of erythrocyte lysis.