Interaction between certain traumas causing the lysis of red cells

¹ Protein Foundation Laboratories, Boston, Massachusetts

Human red cells were subjected to pairs of the following traumas: heat, hypotonicity, freezing and acidity. Pairs of traumas were applied simultaneously or separately, and in some cases the same trauma was inflicted twice. The hemolysis in each tube of cells receiving two traumas was compared to the total hemolysis in two tubes of cells, each receiving only one trauma. When the pairs of traumas were inflicted simultaneously on a single tube of cells the resultant hemolysis was greater than the total hemolysis which occurred when each of the traumas was inflicted on separate tubes of cells. However, this synergism disappeared when the two traumas were applied separately, except when heating or freezing was one of the traumas involved and then only when one of these was the first trauma applied. The effect was small when the same trauma was administered twice. This synergistic action of pairs of traumas is probably related to the exponential nature of the sigmoid curve representing individual traumas.