RESUMO
The usefulness of the pre-incubated acidified glycerol lysis test (AGLT), a laboratory test for spherocytosis, has been investigated in a selected hospital population of 348 patients with haemolytic and non-haemolytic anaemia. The AGLT was positive in 58 out of 59 patients with hereditary spherocytosis. In all 32 patients with other types of hereditary haemolytic anaemia the AGLT was normal or equivocal, but clearly different from spherocytosis. Adults with a positive AGLT, but without hereditary spherocytosis, had auto-immune haemolytic anaemia, myelodysplastic syndrome or were pregnant women. In newborn infants the AGLT was positive, in the first week of life, in those babies having hereditary spherocytosis or immune haemolysis due to blood group incompatibility; no positive AGLT results were seen if no haematological explanation for neonatal hyperbilirubinaemia could be found. At the optimal cut-off point the sensitivity of the AGLT for hereditary spherocytosis was 98.3% and the specificity 91.1%, under the most unfavourable conditions. The AGLT is a very useful and simple test for the diagnosis of hereditary spherocytosis.
Assuntos
Glicerol , Esferocitose Hereditária/diagnóstico , Adulto , Fatores Etários , Humanos , Recém-Nascido , Sensibilidade e EspecificidadeRESUMO
A detailed classification of plasma cells stained for acid phosphatase activity is introduced. With this method, patients with multiple myeloma, non-myeloma gammopathies, reactive plasmacytosis and other diseases in which plasma cells are involved, were investigated. The results show that our method can discriminate between multiple myeloma and reactive plasmacytosis. The overlap between multiple myeloma and other monoclonal gammopathies is much smaller than observed in other studies. Surprisingly low levels of acid phosphatase activity were found in the cells from patients with lymphoplasmacytoid immunocytoma. It is concluded that the acid phosphatase score can be of value for studying disorders in which plasma cells are involved.