Erythrocyte morphology automated analysis: proposal for a new prediction tool of essential hypertension diagnosis.

BACKGROUND Erythrocyte morphology has already been studied in essential hypertension (EH) and cell membrane alterations have been observed. Relationships among red cell rheological, biochemical, and morphological properties still appear complex and are not clearly understood. METHODS Erythrocyte morphology study was carried out by using the novel automated method we have recently developed. The morphometric parameters derived from optical microscope images were elaborated with image processing software (NIH Scion Image) to construct an application for the principal component analysis (PCA) to achieve a reliable and objective statistical method that would discriminate among erythrocyte morphologies of the considered groups. Three groups of subjects were studied: healthy (n = 30), healthy with familial EH (n = 25), and EH suffering subjects (n = 26). RESULTS Our results show that morphological modifications are evident in both erythrocytes from EH and from healthy with familial EH subjects as compared to the controls. PCA showed remarkable morphological alterations in EH patients. In fact, the PCA explains for the 86.271% of the total variance that can be considered an excellent result. CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that the use of this automated easy and inexpensive method for the detection of cell shape abnormalities is of high value in the early EH prediction.