Eosinopenia as a marker of infection in patients with sickle cell anaemia: A preliminary report

Neutrophilia is a useful marker of infection in many clinical settings but it is of limited value in SCA patients in whom neutrophilia with left shift is common even in steady state in the absence of infection. We hypothesize that eosinopenia may be a more reliable marker of infection in SCA patients. Retrospective analysis of the neutrophil and eosinophil counts of SCA patients in steady state with microbiologically confirmed infections in comparison to that of SCA patients without infection was conducted. The sensitivity and specificity of neutrophilia and eosinopenia as markers of infection in SCA patients were determined and compared. Neutrophilia and eosinopenia had similar sensitivity values of 100%. However, eosinopenia had a specificity of 93.3% that was significantly higher than the specificity of 80% for neutrophilia (p<0.05). Therefore, eosinopenia has the potential of being a more reliable marker of infection in SCA. However, there is the need to establish the significance of this preliminary report by larger multi-centre studies.