Published in:
01-09-2010 | Original Paper
Age, beta thalassaemia trait, and iron-deficient anaemia significantly affect reticulocyte indices in pre-school children
Published in: European Journal of Pediatrics | Issue 9/2010
Login to get accessAbstract
Background
Reticulocyte indices are easy to obtain, low cost parameters and have gained interest in the field of diagnosing anaemias of childhood.
Methods
We assessed distribution, age and gender variation, relation to indices of iron metabolism and diagnostic performance of reticulocyte haemoglobin content (CHr), percentage of microcytic reticulocytes (micro_r), percentage of hypochromic reticulocytes (hypo_r), and percentage of reticulocytes with low CHr (low_CHr) in 386 pre-school children classified in four groups: healthy, iron deficiency (ID), iron deficiency anaemia (IDA), and β-thalassaemia carriers (β-thal).
Results
Age had a positive effect in CHr (Spearman's ρ = 0.21) and a negative effect in hypo_r (Spearman's ρ = −0.2) in healthy children. CHr and low_CHr were related to ferritin in the IDA group (Spearman's ρ 0.55 and −0.53, respectively). In the β-thal group, HbA2 is strongly related to all reticulocyte indices. micro_r and CHr performed best in discriminating between IDA and β-thal heterozygosity (ROC analysis, area under the curve (AUC): 0.76 and 0.74, respectively). CHr achieved the best AUC (0.58) in identifying ID among children without anaemia.
Conclusion
Age, IDA and β-thal significantly affect reticulocyte indices. CHr and micro_r may have a role as screening tools in discriminating between IDA and β-thal heterozygosity.