Research into Morphofunctional Characteristics of Erythrocytes in COVID-19 Patients

Victor Revin; Larisa Balykova; Sergey Pinyaev; Ilya Syusin; Olga Radaeva; Nadezhda Revina; Yuliya Kostina; Evgeniy Kozlov; Vera Inchina; Igor Nikitin; Alexandr Salikov; Ilya Fedorov

doi:10.3390/biomedicines10030553

Research into Morphofunctional Characteristics of Erythrocytes in COVID-19 Patients

Biomedicines. 2022 Feb 25;10(3):553. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines10030553.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education, Ogarev Mordovia State University, 430005 Saransk, Russia.
² Federal State Autonomous Institution, Treatment and Rehabilitation Center of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, 125367 Moscow, Russia.
³ State Budgetary Institution of Healthcare, City Clinical Hospital after V.M. Buyanov of the Moscow Department of Health, 115516 Moscow, Russia.

Abstract

In this paper, the erythrocytes of healthy donors and people with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 were tested by Raman spectroscopy and laser interference microscopy. We argue that erythrocytes (red blood cells) in COVID-19 patients have an irregular shape, and their morphometric characteristics are impaired in comparison to healthy red blood cells. Raman spectroscopy also allows us to detect a decreased oxygen transport function of these erythrocytes. The combination of these methods-Raman spectroscopy and laser interference microscopy-is a highly effective method for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2.

Keywords: COVID-19; Raman spectroscopy; erythrocytes; hemoglobin; laser interference microscopy; novel coronavirus infection.