Effect of neonatal reticulocytosis on glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) activity and G6PD deficiency detection: a cross-sectional study

Screening for G6PD deficiency in newborns can help prevent severe hemolysis, hyperbilirubinemia, and bilirubin encephalopathy, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). It has been speculated that the presence of a high number of reticulocytes in newborns interferes with the diagnosis of G6PD deficiency since reticulocytes contain higher amounts of G6PD enzyme than mature erythrocytes. Therefore, the purposes of this study were to assess the effect of reticulocytosis in the determination of blood G6PD activity in Thai newborns by using a novel automated UV-based enzymatic assay and to validate the performance of this assay for the detection of G6PD deficiency in newborn samples.

The levels of reticulocytes and G6PD activity were measured in blood samples collected from 1,015 newborns. G6PD mutations were identified using TaqMan^® SNP genotyping assay, PCR–restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR–RFLP), and direct sequencing. The correlation between the levels of reticulocytes and G6PD activity was examined. The performance of the automated method was compared with that of the fluorescent spot test (FST) and the standard quantitative assay.

The automated assay detected G6PD deficiency in 6.5% of the total newborn subjects compared to 5.3% and 6.1% by the FST and the standard method, respectively. The minor allele frequencies (MAFs) of G6PD Viangchan^G871A, G6PD Mahidol^G487A, and G6PD Union^C1360T were 0.066, 0.005, and 0.005, respectively. The reticulocyte counts in newborns with G6PD deficiency were significantly higher than those in normal male newborns (p < 0.001). Compared with normal newborns after controlling for thalassemias and hemoglobinopathies, G6PD-deficient patients with the G6PD Viangchan^G871A mutation exhibited elevated reticulocyte counts (5.82 ± 1.73%, p < 0.001). In a group of G6PD normal newborns, the percentage of reticulocytes was positively correlated with G6PD activity (r = 0.327, p < 0.001). However, there was no correlation between G6PD activity and the levels of reticulocytes in subjects with G6PD deficiency (r = -0.019, p = 0.881). The level of agreement in the detection of G6PD deficiency was 0.999, while the area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUC) curve demonstrated that the automated method had 98.4% sensitivity, 99.5% specificity, 92.4% positive predictive value (PPV), 99.9% negative predictive value (NPV), and 99.4% accuracy.

We report that reticulocytosis does not have a statistically significant effect on the detection of G6PD deficiency in newborns by both qualitative and quantitative methods.