Thrombosis is the pathological formation of platelet aggregates that cause stroke and heart attack\textemdash the leading causes of death in developed nations. Determining effective dosages for platelet therapies (e.g. aspirin, Integrilin, and Plavix) to prevent thrombosis is a persistent medical challenge (studies estimate up to 45% of patients exhibit insufficient responses to these drugs) and recent studies have implicated pathological flow conditions of high shear rates and stenosis morphology as primary factors. However, there are currently no diagnostic instruments able to recapitulate a range of such pathological flow conditions for evaluating thrombosis with and without these drugs.
In this work, a microfluidic device and associated optical system were designed and fabricated for simultaneous measurement of platelet aggregation at multiple initial wall shear rates within multiple stenotic channels in label-free whole blood and used to characterize thrombosis at varying dosages of two platelet therapies: acetyl-salicylic acid (aspirin) and eptifibatide (Integrilin).
Results from our studies show the effects of pathologically high shear rates on enhancing platelet thrombosis and demonstrate the widely varied, shear-dependent efficacy of each therapy. This study lays the foundation for the future development of a medical diagnostic for optimizing the type and dosage of patient platelet therapy and to better understand their mechanisms of action.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:GATECH/oai:smartech.gatech.edu:1853/52154 |
| Date | 27 August 2014 |
| Creators | Li, Melissa |
| Contributors | Forest, Craig R. |
| Publisher | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | Georgia Tech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
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