Fig. 2.

Representative example of plasma-induced nanoparticle aggregation generated with a sample from a critical patient; A) Schematic representation of the impact of adding proteins (purple dots) at different concentrations to gold nanoparticles (yellow dots); B) Photographs of the colloidal suspensions after adding fifteen decreasing dilutions of a sample from a critical patient with an initial total protein concentration value of 8 g·dL^-1 (superscripts indicate the protein concentration in diluted samples prior to nanoparticle addition in g·dL^-1) C) Extinction spectra of tests highlighted in panel B; D) Extinction at 530 nm (Ex530); and E) Pixel intensity (PI) as a function of the protein concentration prior to nanoparticle addition in diluted samples.