Depending on the application as well as the kind of fragility involved, the amount of stress applied and/or the significance of the resultant hemolysis may vary.
Osmotic fragility is affected by various factors, including membrane composition and integrity as well as the cells' sizes or surface-area-to-volume ratios.
[3][4][5] The osmotic fragility test is common in hematology, and is often performed to aid with diagnosis of diseases associated with RBC membrane abnormalities.
For example, photons or radicals can induce hemolysis.Erythrocytes/RBC may also be tested for related membrane properties aside from fragility, including erythrocyte deformability and cell morphology.
Deformability testing involves measuring the degree or ease of cells' contortion or shape change under a given level of applied force - or some indirect inference of the like.