Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY-HEART AND CIRCULATORY PHYSIOLOGY
Volume 281, Issue 2, Pages H939-H950Publisher
AMER PHYSIOLOGICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1152/ajpheart.2001.281.2.H939
Keywords
venous resistance; radial migration; red blood cell aggregation; in vivo fluorescence microscopy; venous network topology
Funding
- NHLBI NIH HHS [HL-52684, HL-62354, HL-64395] Funding Source: Medline
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Axial migration of red blood cells in small glass tubes can cause blood viscosity to be effectively independent of shear rate. However, this phase separation may not occur to the same degree in the venous network due to infusion of cells and aggregates at branch points. To investigate this hypothesis, we followed trajectories of fluorescently labeled red blood cells in the venular network of the rat spinotrapezius muscle at normal and reduced flow with and without red blood cell aggregation. Cells traveling near the wall of an unbranched venular segment migrated similar to1% of the longitudinal path length without aggregation and migrated slightly more with aggregation. Venular segment length between branch points averaged three to five times the diameter. Cells in the main vessel were shifted centrally by up to 20% of diameter at branch points, reducing the migration rate of cells near the opposite wall to <1% even in the presence of aggregation. We conclude that formation of a cell-free marginal layer in the venular network is attenuated due to the time dependence of axial migration and the frequent branching of the network.
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