Gender differences of blood rheological parameters in laboratory animals

Although growing number of evidences supports the gender differences of hemorheological variables in human, little is known about this question in experimental animals. Investigating this question and giving laboratory-specific reference values, blood samples from healthy male and female CD rats and beagle dogs were tested for hematological parameters (microcell counter), blood and plasma viscosity (capillary viscometer), erythrocyte deformability (bulk filtrometry and ektacytometry), erythrocyte aggregation (light transmission aggregometer) and fibrinogen concentration (coagulometer). Besides the inter-species alterations we found hematological gender differences too regarding the red blood cell count and hematocrit. In rats the erythrocyte aggregation index was higher in females, while in beagle dogs the males showed significantly higher aggregation index values. In rats the red blood cell deformability showed better values in females. In beagle dogs this was the opposite, the males had better elongation index (EI) values in the function of shear stress (SS). Besides this it was also experienced that the shape of the canine EI - SS curves differed from the rats' values. Gender differences with inter-species alterations can be observed in laboratory animals (rats and dogs) that have to be taken under consideration during planning experiments and evaluating results.