Hello! I have been a doctor for 21 years. My name is Georgy Olegovich Sapego. In this article I will tell you about ESR.
ESR is the erythrocyte sedimentation rate. The blood is placed in a vertical tube and there the red blood cells (erythrocytes) gradually settle. Their subsidence rate is measured in millimeters per hour.
ESR is referred to as the so-called acute phase indicators, which appear during a serious illness, infection, oncology and all that.
For red blood cells to stick together and settle to the bottom, there must be many large protein molecules between them. We have already discussed this in article about negative charge of erythrocytes.
With inflammation, there are many such viscous proteins, and ESR increases.
In fact, ESR can increase for other reasons. The erythrocytes themselves may be defective or just a technical error.
The main reasons for increasing ESR
If we see a high ESR, then we immediately think about proteins in the blood and all sorts of similar things:
- some kind of inflammation;
- infection;
- oncology;
- damage or insufficient blood supply to tissues;
- injury.
If the ESR has increased to 100 mm / h, then it is more likely an infection and only then oncology or some kind of autoimmune disease.
It happens that increased ESR is not associated with inflammation. Other reasons include age and female sex, for example. There are a lot of women and people of age among us, so it is difficult to calculate some strict norm for ESR. There are special tables, but on average, you can estimate like this:
For men, the upper limit of ESR = (age in years) / 2
For women, the upper limit of ESR = (age in years + 10) / 2
Anemia
We have already discussed in the article about the charge of erythrocytes, that they repel each other. One can imagine that they constantly bounce off like billiard balls and therefore remain suspended.
With anemia, there are usually fewer red blood cells than we would like, so they cannot bounce off each other and slowly sink to the bottom.
Kidney
In people with serious kidney disease, ESR is often elevated. Nobody knows exactly why this is happening.
Obesity
In obese people, ESR increases due to those inflammatory substances that I talked about in article before last about fat and joints.
Decreased ESR
This also happens. Sometimes the erythrocytes are sick, deformed and ugly, but just due to their ugliness, for some reason they sink to the bottom more slowly.
There are many other reasons for low ESR:
- there are a lot of leukocytes in the blood;
- heart failure;
- high levels of bile acids in the blood;
- low levels of fibrinogen protein;
- severe exhaustion;
- technical errors (blood clotted or the analysis was delayed for a couple of hours);
- it was just very cold in the laboratory.
In short, everything is complicated there, and you can't do without a doctor. Therefore, do not self-examine, but consult your doctor.
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