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Sticky membranes of dead red blood cells obstruct small vessels

Damage to the vascular lining leads to interactions with red blood cells that hint at how to treat dangerous complications of heart attack, stroke and COVID-19.
By
  1. Elizabeth Iffrig

    1. Elizabeth Iffrig is in the Department of Pediatrics and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA, and in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

  2. Wilbur A. Lam

    1. Wilbur A. Lam is in the Department of Pediatrics and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA, and at Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

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In various life-threatening illnesses, damage occurs to the endothelium, the inner lining of blood vessels. Writing in Nature, Wu et al.1 report that dying endothelial cells directly induce the destruction of red blood cells. The remnants of those ruptured cells then act like a glue that sticks to the endothelium and accumulates more red blood cells, obstructing small blood vessels in vital organs such as the brain, lungs and kidneys.

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Nature 643, 44-45 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01457-6

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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