Abstract
Malignant malaria is an infectious disease caused by Plasmodium falciparum in tropical and subtropical regions in the world. P. falciparum invades red blood cells (RBCs) and remodels their membrane. It is well known that the membrane of P. falciparum-infected RBCs (P.f-iRBCs) become indurated as a result of the remodeling. However, this remodeling mechanism remains to be elucidated. Here, we present a tensile test method for RBCs using dielectrophoresis (DEP) that is able to quantify their deformability and can be used to elucidate the remodeling mechanism in combination with biochemical analyses. The deformability of P.f-iRBCs and uninfected RBCs were quantified using this method. We found that the deformability of P.f-iRBCs was significantly lower than that of uninfected RBCs, suggesting that the membrane of P.f-iRBCs become indurated as reported previously. We conclude that this method is useful to quantify the deformability of the RBC and evaluate the RBC remodeling activity of P. falciparum.
