Features of electric and viscoelastic parameters of erythrocytes in patients with inflammatory intestinal diseases

The aim of this work is to study the features of the electrical and viscoelastic parameters of erythrocytes in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, unclassified colitis), taking into account the stage of the disease for possible use in differential diagnosis.The electrical and viscoelastic parameters of erythrocytes were studied using dielectrophoresis in 109 patients with IBD, mean age 37,7 + 11,7 years (50 patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), 41 with Crohn’s disease (CD), 18 with unclassified colitis (UCC) and 53 conditionally healthy, comparable in age and sex with the main groups.Red blood cells of individuals with IBD differed from those in the comparison group by a smaller average diameter, an increased proportion of deformed, spherocytic cells with a changed surface character with a reduced ability to deform, a lower level of surface charge of cells, an altered membrane structure with an increased ability to conduct electric current, prone to destruction and the formation of aggregates (p <0,0001–0,05).Analysis in individual groups with IBD in the acute stage, taking into account the therapy, revealed significant differences between the forms of IBD: in patients with Crohn’s disease, in contrast to patients with UC, red blood cells had lower values of the amplitude of deformation, capacity, dipole moment, and velocity of movement of cells towards electrodes, the proportion of discocytes, polarizability at most of the frequencies of the electric field (p <0,00001–0,05). On the contrary, the summarized indicators of rigidity, viscosity, electrical conductivity, aggregation and destruction indices were higher in CD than in UC (p <0,0001–0,05). CD patients had a greater number of deformed cells with altered surface character (p <0,00001).The features of the electrical and viscoelastic parameters of erythrocytes in patients with differentnosological forms of IBD can be used for the differential diagnosis of ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease in case of colon lesions, in the long term — for verification of the diagnosis in unclassified colitis.