intracellular water

The superficial squamous cells have a clear, seemingly empty cytoplasm but it has not been shown that there is an increase in intracellular water, possibly making the term edema misleading.

During periods of aridity, cells dehydrate and draw upon hemolymph stores to replenish intracellular water; therefore, insects with higher levels of this fluid are less prone to desiccation.

(Cell structure relies on fat membranes to separate and organize intracellular water, proteins and nucleic acids and cholesterol is one of the components of all animal cell membranes.)

Research efforts have been hampered by not having an easy way to assess in patients the fluid depletion in different compartments of the body, i.e., total body water and extracellular and intracellular water volume.

We found that the total intracellular water signal (see Figure 6) shrinks in response to osmotically driven efflux when the tissue is exposed to hypertonic solutions (with salt or sucrose in the perfusate spectra; data not shown).

The assignment of the two signals to represent the total intracellular water and the total extracellular water, including the apoplast, has been confirmed by the selective imaging of intracellular and extracellular water using this approach [ 71].

Using sophisticated methodology to determine total body water and extracellular water, they demonstrate a 6.7% deficit in total body water and an 11.7% deficit of intracellular water, providing an important indication of the volumes of fluid that may be required to optimize hydration.