Glutaraldehyde effect on the osmotic fragility and rate of haemolysis of human erythrocytes: a kinetic study.

The effect of glutaraldehyde treatment on the osmotic fragility and rate of haemolysis of human erythrocytes was studied in the temperature domain 22-42 degrees C at different aldehyde concentrations from 0.010 to 0.040% (w/v). The osmotic fragility linearly decreases at increasing temperatures for all glutaraldehyde concentrations with approximately the same slope as for the untreated erythrocytes. Rather similar effects are produced on the rate of haemolysis. It was not possible to define unique activation energies. The maximal haemolysis becomes smaller after the treatment with increasing concentrations of glutaraldehyde but more erythrocytes are no longer able to tolerate normally non-haemolysing osmotic stretching, this suggesting an artificial "ageing" of erythrocytes. The formation of a membrane protein skeleton as a result of cross-linking is inferred, while the changes in the cytoskeletal spectrin network seem to be less important.