[Rheologic study of the dissociation reaction of erythrocyte immunologic agglutinates: application to subgroup A erythrocytes].
Red blood cell Agglutinates can be dissociated by providing enough energy which may be supplied by shear stress in a viscometer. In this paper a new technique is proposed to determine dissociation parameters of erythrocyte immunological agglutinates by using a laser backscattering method. Backscattered light intensity increases during the process of agglutinate dissociation when a controlled shear stress in a transparent Couette viscometer is applied. The obtained curves of dissociation can be fitted by an exponential function. A numerical integration of the dissociation curves allows us to obtain a parameter associated to the energy used in the dissociation process. A satisfactory differentiation of erythrocyte sub-groups Al, Az, A,B and Am has been carried out using this technique.