Characterization of stress–strain behaviour of red blood cells (RBCs), part II: response of malaria-infected RBCs

Malaria is an infectious disease induced by a parasite named Plasmodium and annually affects two to three million people. The most serious form of malaria for humans is caused by Plasmodium falciparum, and the progression of P. falciparum is closely linked to the deformation characteristics of red blood cells (RBCs). Conventional isotropic material models have been used to represent the RBC behaviour. In this paper, an inverse analysis approach, Self-Learning Simulation (SelfSim), is applied to extract the RBC material behaviour from complementary boundary force and displacement measurements of healthy, exposed, ring, trophozoit and schizont stages of RBC obtained by optical tweezers method. SelfSim reveals that the nonlinear deformation characteristics of healthy RBC are lost with P. falciparum parasite development. The deformability and anisotropic stress–strain behaviour inferred from healthy RBC decrease for mature stages of malaria-infected RBCs. SelfSim provides new insights into the stress–strain behaviour maps of malaria progression for disease diagnosis.