ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) and thalassemia trait (TT) are the most common microcytic and hypochromic anemias. Differentiation between mild TT and early IDA is still a clinical challenge. AIM: To develop and validate a new index for discriminating between IDA and TT. METHODS: Blood count data from 126 patients, consisting of 43 TT patients and 83 IDA patients, was retrospectively analyzed to develop a new index formula. This formula was further validated in another 61 patients, consisting of 48 TT patients and 13 IDA patients. RESULTS: The new index is the ratio of hemoglobin to mean corpuscular volume. Its sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, Youden's Index, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, and Kappa coefficient in discriminating between IDA and TT were 93.5%, 78.4%, 83.3%, 0.72, 0.97, and 0.65, respectively. CONCLUSION: This new index has good diagnostic performance in discriminating between mild TT and early IDA. It requires only two results of complete blood count, which can be a very desirable feature in under-resourced scenarios.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Sensitized recipients have a high risk of immunological graft loss due to hyperacute rejection and/or accelerated acute rejection. The presence of major histocompatibility complex class I-related chain A (MICA) antibodies has also been described associated with an increased rate of kidney-allograft rejection. The aim of this study was to describe the expression of MICA antibodies in sensitized recipients of renal transplantation and evaluate its influence on the kidney transplantation recipients. METHODS: A total of 29 sensitized recipients were included in this study. All patients received the MICA antibodies detection before and after protein A immunoadsorption. Panel reactive antibody (PRA), HLA-matches, acute rejection and postoperative one to four-week serum creatinine level were also collected and analyzed, respectively. No prisoners were used in this study. RESULTS: Eight patients (27.6%) in all 29 sensitized recipients expressed the MICA antibodies but did not show higher acute rejection rate than the non-expressed patients (3/8, 37.5% vs. 8/21, 38.1%; P = 1.000). Recipients with PRA > 40% showed higher expression levels of MICA antibodies than the recipients with PRA < 40% (7/16, 43.8% vs. 1/13, 8.3%; P = 0.044). HLA mismatch did not have any effect on the expression of MICA antibodies (P = 1.000). MICA antibodies positive group had higher serum creatinine level than the control in postoperative one week ((135.4 ± 21.4) µmol/L vs. (108.6 ± 31.6) µmol/L, P = 0.036), but no significant difference in postoperative four weeks ((89.0 ± 17.1) µmol/L vs. (77.1 ± 15.9) µmol/L, P = 0.089). MICA antibodies decreased significantly after protein A immunoadsorption. CONCLUSIONS: MICA antibodies increase in the sensitized recipients, which have significant effects on the function of allograft in early postoperative period. Protein A immunoadsorption can decrease MICA antibodies effectively in sensitized recipients.
