A special form of erythrocyte possessing increased resistance to hypotonic saline

The Anemia of Liver Disease: Observations on Its Mechanism 1

“…In contrast to patients with obstructive jaundice and infectious hepatitis (18,19), no evidence of diffuse red cell "flattening" was found in patients with cirrhosis as determined either by direct measurement of red cell volume and diameter and calculation of thickness, or by increase in osmotic resistance of the entire cell population of samples of unincubated blood. However, as noted, small numbers of target cells were commonly present 401 and a small portion (about 15 per cent) of the unincubated red cells showed increased resistance to osmotic lysis.…”

“…An increase in diameter and decrease in thickness without increase in volume manifest also as an increase in resistance to osmotic lysis of the red cells of certain jaundiced patients have been reported to be an acquired characteristic (17). This red cell alteration, however, has been described in association with biliary obstruction (18) and infectious hepatitis (19) rather than with chronic liver disease, and thus an essential relationship to the anemia of liver disease has not been demonstrated. This is a report of a series of 20 patients with chronic liver disease and anemia who have been studied by a number of hematologic techniques.…”

Hematological findings in the Norrbottnian type of Gaucher disease

“…Generally the abundance of morphological abnormalities parallels the degree of anemia. Target cells accompany splenectomy [2,15], and Bessis [3] has pointed out that the artefact that underlies the phenomenon of poikilocytosis is facilitated in target cells with a high ratio between cell surface and cell volume. Consequently splenectomized patients with minimal anemia would, because of the high frequency of target cells found in these patients, show evidence of the same frequency of morphological abnormalities as the anemic non-splenectomized patients.…”

The role of membrane lipids in the survival of red cells in hereditary spherocytosis

“…The occurrence of target cells with increased surface area after splenectomy parallels the acquisition of osmotic resistance (43), and both evolve to a maximum over several weeks to several months (15,44,45 Lipid is acquired by HS red cells in obstructive jaundice, either in vitro or in vivo, and this leads to an increase in the cell's surface area-to-volume ratio. Although not measured, this increase probably enhances the cell's deformability and allows the cell to traverse the spleen more efficiently.…”