Effect of cytosol viscosity on the flow behavior of red blood cell suspensions in microvessels

Abstract: The flow behavior of blood in microvessels is directly associated with tissue perfusion and oxygen delivery. Current efforts on modeling blood flow have primarily focused on the flow properties of blood with red blood cells (RBCs) having a viscosity ratio $C$ of unity between the cytosol and suspending medium, while under physiological conditions the cytosol viscosity is about five times larger than the plasma viscosity (i.e., $C\approx 5$). The importance of $C$ for the behavior of single RBCs in fluid flow has already been demonstrated, while the effect of $C$ on blood flow has only been sparsely studied. We employ mesoscopic hydrodynamic simulations to perform a systematic investigation of flow properties of RBC suspensions with different cytosol viscosities for various flow conditions in cylindrical microchannels. Our main aim is to link macroscopic flow properties such as flow resistance to single cell deformation and dynamics as a function of $C$. Starting from a dispersed cell configuration, we find that the flow convergence and the development of a RBC-free layer (RBC-FL) depend only weakly on $C$, and require a convergence length in the range of $25D-50D$, where $D$ is the channel diameter. The flow resistance for $C=5$ is nearly the same as that for $C=1$, which is facilitated by a slightly larger RBC-FL thickness for $C=5$. This effect is due to the suppression of membrane motion and dynamic shape deformations by a more viscous cytosol for $C=5$, resulting in a more compact cellular core of the flow in comparison to $C=1$. The weak effect of cytosol viscosity on the flow resistance and RBC-FL explains why cells can have a high concentration of hemoglobin for efficient oxygen delivery, without a pronounced increase in the flow resistance.