Studies of Element Concentration in the Lymphocytes, Erythrocytes, and Plasma of Healthy Human Donors Using Total Reflection X-ray Fluorescence

Abstract

In this article, the total reflection X-ray fluorescence (TXRF) analysis was used for determination of element concentrations in three isolated peripheral blood components: lymphocytes, erythrocytes, and plasma, collected from 36 healthy donors (15 men and 21 women) from eastern Poland. The studied blood components were isolated from whole peripheral blood using Histopaque-1077 density gradient centrifugation. In the lymphocytes, the following elements were measured: P, S, Cl, K, Ca, Fe, Zn, Br, Sr, and Pb. In the erythrocytes: P, S, Cl, K, Cr, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, Se, Br, Rb, and Pb, while in the plasma samples: P, S, Cl, K, Ti, V, Cr, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Br, Se, Sr, and Pb. The descriptive statistics parameters of concentration such as: mean value, standard deviation, median, first and third quartiles, 10th and 90th percentiles were calculated for all samples of the studied blood components, as well as separately for male and female groups. The measured element concentrations and calculated parameters can be used as the reference values. Element concentration distributions for male and female groups were statistically compared using the non-parametric Mann–Whitney test and statistical significance differences (α = 0.05) were found for: P (in lymphocytes), Se and Rb (in erythrocytes), and V (in plasma). The multigroup statistical comparison of element concentration distribution for different blood components was also done (Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis tests). The statistical tests show that the concentration levels are usually different, except in the following cases: Zn, Fe (lymphocytes and plasma, Fe only for female group), Cr (erythrocytes and plasma). The obtained concentration ranges were compared with literature-based data available for element concentration in lymphocytes, erythrocytes, and plasma. In this work, the application of the TXRF method allowed additionally for the simultaneous determination of the concentrations of such elements as: P, S, Cl, Br, Sr and Pb in lymphocytes, S, Cl and Br in erythrocytes, and P, S, Cl, K, Ti, Br and Pb in plasma. From an analytical point of view, the article describes in detail the measurement procedure including the isolation of blood components and samples preparation for TXRF measurements, and later the detection limit of the method is discussed.