Dielectric spectroscopy study of specific glucose influence on human erythrocyte membranes

Time domain dielectric spectroscopy has been used to study spherical erythrocytes, suspended in diluted phosphate buffered saline (PBS) buffers at varying concentrations of D- and L-glucose at 25°C. The osmolarity for each glucose solution was adapted, equalling that of a 63% PBS (183 mOsm). The strong effect of the electrode polarization was corrected using the fractal approach in time domain. For analysis of the dielectric properties of suspensions of erythrocytes, the Maxwell-Wagner model is used for small volume fractions. Values of the permittivity and conductivity of the cell membrane were obtained from a fitting procedure according to the one-shell model. The non-monotonic and specific response of membrane electric properties on D-glucose concentrations were observed, with a dramatic decrease around 12 mM. No changes of membrane properties have been observed in the presence of increasing concentrations of L-glucose, the biologically inactive enantiomer of D-glucose. The effect is thus specific to D-glucose. The possible mechanism of specific cell reaction to D-glucose is discussed in this paper.