Sessile Drop Approach to Surface Energy Determination of Hepatitis C Virus Infected Blood Cells

Abstract

This study employed the contact angle approach to measure the angle formed using sessile drop techniques with glycerin as probe liquid on HCV infected and uninfected blood samples. The research also is embodied with the determination of CD4 counts on both the infected and uninfected samples of the blood and the surface free energy of the blood samples which served as a useful determinant in the prediction of the activities of the virus on the blood samples. A total of twenty blood samples were used for the study. Smearing was done on the slides at room temperature and allowed to dry, glycerin was dropped on the surface of the smeared slide while the spreading process is captured. The average contact angle obtained for infected white blood cells was 63.4±3.20 which was observed to be the highest while that for uninfected white blood cells was 48.5±2.75 and are in agreement with literature results. The contact angle data was used for MATLAB computation to obtain the surface free energy. The interfacial surface energy for uninfected blood derived as 44.35±1.90mJ/m2 was reduced to 33.54±2.31mJ/m2 for the infected blood due to interaction effects of the virus. The findings of this research have provided a clue for the pharmaceutical industries towards gaining an insight to the interaction mechanism of hepatitis c virus to enable the design of drugs for the treatment of the virus.