Longitudinal viscosity of blood plasma for rapid COVID-19 prognostics

Abstract

Blood Plasma Viscosity (PV) is an established biomarker for numerous diseases. While PV colloquially refers to the shear viscosity, there is a second viscosity component--the bulk viscosity--that describes the irreversible fluid compressibility on short time scales. The bulk viscosity is acutely sensitive to solid-like suspensions, and obtainable via the longitudinal viscosity from acoustic attenuation measurements. Whether it has diagnostic value remains unexplored yet may be pertinent given the association of diverse pathologies with the formation of plasma suspensions, such as fibrin-microstructures in COVID-19 and long-COVID. Here we show that the longitudinal PV measured using Brillouin Light Scattering (BLS) can serve as a proxy for the shear PV of blood plasma, and exhibits a temperature dependence consistent with increased suspension concentrations in severe COVID-patient plasma. Our results open a new avenue for PV diagnostics based on the longitudinal PV, and show that BLS can provide a means for its clinical implementation.

Optical characterization of molecular interaction strength in protein condensates

“…The change of Brillouin shift and longitudinal modulus induced by crosslinking of a polymer solution is typically small if the polymer volume fraction is kept constant [51,57,58]. An increase in shear viscosity as reported previously [39] should have been reflected in a larger Brillouin linewidth, although the relationship between shear viscosity and Brillouin linewidth is not straightforward [59]. Interestingly, the increase of the Brillouin shift was suppressed at a KCl concentration of 2.5 M, suggesting that a high abundance of ions attenuates the molecular interactions driving the aging process.…”

“…The change of Brillouin shift and longitudinal modulus induced by crosslinking of a polymer solution is typically small if the polymer volume fraction is kept constant [51, 57, 58]. An increase in shear viscosity as reported previously [39] should have been reflected in a larger Brillouin linewidth, although the relationship between shear viscosity and Brillouin linewidth is not straightforward [59].…”