Enhanced survival of sickle erythrocytes upon treatment with glyceraldehyde.

Glyceraldehyde has been demonstrated to be an antisickling agent in vitro. In the present investigation, chromium-51 red cell studies were used to investigate the life span in vivo of sickle erythrocytes after treatment with glyceraldehyde in vitro. The mean survival (T1/2) of control cells was 5.8 +/- 1.6 days, whereas cells treated with 10 mmol/L or 20 mmol/L glyceraldehyde survived 9.0 +/- 1.4 (P less than .05) and 11.3 +/- 0.8 (P less than .002) days, respectively. The extent of modification by glyceraldehyde was 0.4 to 1.0 lysine residue per hemoglobin tetramer. These studies demonstrate not only a prolongation of the life span of sickle erythrocytes by treatment with glyceraldehyde but also the absence of any deleterious effects that would be revealed by this study.