Abstract
Frozen stored red blood cells of human O, green monkey, sheep, guinea pig, chicken and one-day-old chick were studied whether they could be used for conventional virological and serological tests, such as hemadsorption, hemagglutination, hemagglutination-inhibition, complement fixation and immune adherence tests. It was demonstrated that they were comparable in usefulness with unfrozen red blood cells for all the tests performed.
Although the red blood cells, especially those of chicken and sheep, increased sometimes in osmotic fragility storage in frozen state induced no such seriously adverse effects on recovered red blood cells as suggesting alterations in receptors and membrane properties.
This technique of storage allowed the standardization of red blood cells to increase the reproducibility of virological and serological tests.
In freezing red blood cells of human O, green monkey, sheep and guinea pig, packed cells were mixed with an equal volume of cryoprotective solution of glycerol consisting of 28w/v% glycerol, 3% mannitol and 0.65% NaCl, frozen quickly by immersing into liquid nitrogen, and stored in the liquid phase of nitrogen.
On the other hand, in freezing red blood cells of chicken and one-day-old chick, a cryoprotective solution of dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) consisting of 51.5w/v%, DMSO, 8% glucose, 1% fructose and 0.3% EDTA-2Na was used with much better results than the cryoprotective solution of glyceral. With it, the red blood cells were frozen slowly and could be stored at -85°C.
