Yield stress, a threshold shear stress indicating a fluid-like flow above and solid-like behaviour below, is inherent to several complex materials. Everyday fluids like toothpaste, ketchup, and body creams exhibit a yield stress on the order of to . Interestingly, human blood also demonstrates yield stress, although much lower, ranging from to . The origin of the yield stress is attributed to a network of interacting red blood cells (RBCs), which arises from an attractive force between the RBCs, resisting flow under stress. Using scaling analysis, we predict yield stress based on the attractive force between RBCs. Moreover, we outline several techniques developed over the past few decades for accurate, rapid, and cost-effective measurement of the yield stress of blood. The advent of several techniques arises from the observation that healthy human blood generally possesses a lower yield stress compared to blood affected by various health conditions. This includes conditions such as cardiovascular or cerebrovascular diseases, hypertension, sickle cell disease, systemic sclerosis, as well as patients administered with anaesthesia or aspirin tablets, or those undergoing surgeries resulting in increased inflammation in the body. These diseases and phenomena occur because these health conditions alter the composition of blood, including changes in the volume fraction of RBCs, concentration of plasma proteins, as well as factors affecting the shape and deformability of the RBCs. We examine the difference between yield stress in healthy and diseased blood and argue that while blood yield stress may not significantly impact the physiology of blood flow, it can be valuable in clinical research for disease detection based on specific cut-off values. Additionally, we address challenges associated with applying yield stress in clinical research, such as huge variations in the measured yield stress across different techniques, or lack of large sample sizes.
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