Figure 5.

(A) Time course of human neutrophil spreading before and after application of a fluid shear stress for a period of 2 min by means of the single micropipette setup (Fig. 1A). L represents the maximum length cross the cell and L_o the diameter of the undeformed spherical cell. Control is without application of shear stress. (B) Time course of human neutrophil spreading in the presence of platelet-activating factor before and after application of shear stress for 2 min by means of the single micropipette setup (Fig. 1A). (C) Rate of pseudopod retraction measured as the slope to the curve L/L_o in the first minute after application of shear stress (A) for different levels of shear stress. There are no significant differences between the retraction rates. ∗, P < 0.05 compared with control.