Abstract
The generally accepted explanation for hypotonic hemolysis is that the red cells take up water, swell, and finally become permeable because their membranes are stretched or under tension. Conductivity measurements, however, show that the resistance of a hemolysed suspension is such that the cell membranes must have a very low conductance (Fricke and Curtis 1 ), an observation which forces one to consider the possibility that the increased permeability associated with lysis is temporary only, and followed by a more or less complete repair of the membrane.
1. The simplest evidence is to be obtained from systems in which “reversible hemolysis” occurs. This phenomenon is observed when several volumes of water are added to blood or washed cells so as to produce more or less complete lysis, and enough hypertonic NaCl to restore the original tonicity added subsequently. The opacity which appears on the restoration of the tonicity was thought by Brinkman and Szent-Gyorgi 2 to be due to the taking up of liberated hemoglobin on or in the cells, but Bayliss 3 showed that it is the result of two occurrences: (a) if the amount of added water is small, swollen but unhemolysed cells shrink to their original size on the re-establishment of the tonicity, and (b), if the amount of added water is great, hemolysed ghosts shrink under the same conditions, and, trapping hemoglobin, bring about optical heterogeneity.
If to 10 cc. of a washed rabbit red cell suspension with a volume concentration of about 0.7 is added 40 cc. of water, a tonicity in the neighborhood of 0.2 is established, and this is low enough to hemolyse virtually all the cells, as can be shown by the hemoglobin concentration in the supernatant fluid after “reversal” has been produced and the ghosts centrifuged off.
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