Blood and related fluids

Abstract

This section provides data for several human biological fluids including blood, plasma or serum, cerebrospinal (CS) fluid, lymph, synovial fluid, and tear fluid. The material presented here was gleaned from a variety of sources, with emphasis placed on the most recently published work, and includes physicochemical properties (Table C1.1), cellular compositions (Table C1.2), concentrations of inorganics (Table C1.3), organics (Table C1.4), and major proteins (Table C1.5). In addition, various properties of the major proteins are presented in Table C1.7, while Tables C1.8 and C1.9 contain information regarding the components of the coagulation and complement cascades, respectively. Because of the variability in values for many properties of biological fluids, in many cases a normal singular range of such values is listed. In all cases, the data are those compiled for normal human adults and, where possible, differences with respect to gender are included. It must be stressed that fluid properties can readily change as a result of disease, aging, or drug ingestion.