• Eur. J. Pediatr. · Sep 2010

    Age, beta thalassaemia trait, and iron-deficient anaemia significantly affect reticulocyte indices in pre-school children.

    • Giorgos L Chouliaras, Alexandra Stamoulakatou, George Tsiftis, Georgia Perissaki, Evangelos Premetis, and Lilia Lycopoulou.
    • First Department of Paediatrics, Athens University Medical School, Aghia Sophia Children's Hospital, 115 27 Athens, Greece. georgehouliaras@msn.com
    • Eur. J. Pediatr. 2010 Sep 1; 169 (9): 1097-104.

    BackgroundReticulocyte indices are easy to obtain, low cost parameters and have gained interest in the field of diagnosing anaemias of childhood.MethodsWe 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 beta-thalassaemia carriers (beta-thal).ResultsAge had a positive effect in CHr (Spearman's rho = 0.21) and a negative effect in hypo_r (Spearman's rho = -0.2) in healthy children. CHr and low_CHr were related to ferritin in the IDA group (Spearman's rho 0.55 and -0.53, respectively). In the beta-thal group, HbA(2) is strongly related to all reticulocyte indices. micro_r and CHr performed best in discriminating between IDA and beta-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.ConclusionAge, IDA and beta-thal significantly affect reticulocyte indices. CHr and micro_r may have a role as screening tools in discriminating between IDA and beta-thal heterozygosity.

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