Comparison of rheologic properties between Ca-alginate hydrogel microspheres suspension and whole blood / 生物医学工程学杂志

Starting from the form of red blood cells and the hematocrit (Hct, about 45 vol% of whole blood), we tried to prepare a kind of microspheres suspension to imitate non-Newtonian fluid property of whole blood, exploring its potentiality to be applied in blood viscosity quality control substance. In our study, we produced Ca-alginate hydrogel microspheres using emulsion polymerization, then we suspended the microspheres in 0.9 wt% NaCl solution to obtain a kind of liquid sample with the microspheres taking 45% volume. Then we used two types of viscometers to measure and analyse the changes of sample viscosity at different shear rate. We observed the forms of Ca-alginate hydrogel microspheres with microscope, and found them to be relatively complete, and their diameters to be normally distributed. Diameters of about 90% of the microspheres were distributed in a range from 6 to 22 micron. The samples were examined with viscometer FASCO-3010 and LG-R-80c respectively, both of which have shown a shear-thinning effect. After 5-week stability test, the CV of viscosity results corresponding to the two instruments were 7.3% to 13.8% and 8.9% to 14.2%, respectively. Although some differences existed among the results under the same shear rate, the general variation trends of the corresponding results were consistent, so the sample had the potentiality to be widely used in calibrating a different type of blood viscometer.

Screening and preliminary validation of new protein markers in maternal serum for early diagnosis of Down syndrome / 中华检验医学杂志

Objective To assess the clinical application values of the protcin markers associated with Down syndrome (DS) in maternal serum which were screened and identified.Methods Seven maternal serum samples with DS fetus ( DS group) and 7 maternal serum samples with normal fetus ( control group) in the second trimester were separated by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE).The differentinal expression profile of proteome in maternal serum from DS group was established.The differentially expressed proteins were screened by mass spectrometry (MS) and some proteins were verified by Western blotting (WB).Results Twenty-nine proteins were discovered to be differentially expressed by more than 1.5 folds in maternal serum from DS group,among which 19 proteins were up-regulated and 10 proteins were downregulated.Eight proteins displayed 2 or more folds changes in maternal serum from DS group were identified by MS and possibly matched with 12 proteins in Ameracan National Center of Biotchnology Information (NCBI) protein sequence database,such as dGTPase and Beta2-Glycoprotein Ⅰ (β2-GPI),etc.The resuhs of WB showed that the mean a values of dGTPase and β2-GPI were 21 567.0 ± 3009.4 and 22 097.0 ±3958.9 in the DS group,3957.7 ± 250.9 and 1799.7 ± 105.5 in the control group respectively,which presented that the expression of dGTPase and β2-GPI significantly increased in DS group (t'dGTPase =- 17.66,t'β2-GPI =- 14.83,P ＜0.0001 ).Conclusions 2-DE and MS are effective methods for preliminary identification of protein markers associated with DS in maternal serum.dGTPase and β2-GPI verified by WB laid a solid fundation for further screening new biologic markers for early diaglosis of DS.