The influence of folate nutritional status on various pregnancy outcomes has long been recognized. Studies conducted in the 1950s and 1960s led to the recognition of prenatal folic acid supplementation as a means to prevent pregnancy-induced megaloblastic anemia. In the 1990s, the utility of periconceptional folic acid supplementation and folic acid food fortification emerged when they were pro...

The content of folate activity precursors in washed red cells and the enzymatic plasma factor activity, necessary for the release of folate from the precursors, were studied in normal subjects and in patients with megaloblastic anaemia of pregnancy. Subjects with megaloblastic anaemia of pregnancy had a significantly reduced folate activity precursor content, and 14 subjects (58%) had significa...

We have read with interest Maktouf et al.’s letter about the etiological role of deficiencies of cobalamin or folate in megaloblastic anemia. In this large prospective series, they investigated 478 patients with megaloblastic changes in bone marrow smears and reported the demographic, biological and clinical findings in cobalamin-deficient patients and patients with pernicious anemia. Out of 43...

Recent studies using anion exclusion chromatography have suggested that uracil is misincorporated into the DNA of patients with megaloblastic anemia to levels detectable by nonradioactive methods. We have investigated the nucleotide composition of DNA from the bone marrow mononuclear cells of eight patients with cobalamin deficiency and compared this with that found in normal subjects. The medi...

A female rheumatoid arthritis patient was admitted for productive cough and general fatigue that had gradually developed after leflunomide therapy. Side effects including severe hypoxia, thrombocytopenia, lymphocytopenia, and macrocytic anemia with schistocytes (probably drug-induced megaloblastic anemia) were noted. Leflunomide-eliminating cholestyramine therapy successfully treated all condit...

The tritium release assay for the demonstration of thymidylate synthetase activity has been applied to the measurement of enzyme activity in the bone marrow of four patients with pernicious anemia and nine normal subjects. On the average, an approximately ninefold increase in enzyme activity was observed in patients with pernicious anemia. In the absence of 5, 10-methylene-tetrahydrofolate, enz...

Background. Pancytopenia has multiple etiologies like megaloblastic anemia, aplastic anemia, leukemia, and various infections. We investigated the clinical, etiological and hematological profile including bone marrow morphology of patients with pancytopenia in relation to their vitamin B12 and folic acid status at a tertiary care referral hospital in north India. Methods. A total of 140 consecu...

BACKGROUND Megaloblastic anemias are characterized by several hematopoietic cells with dysplastic nuclear morphology. The analyses of DNA ploidy and cell cycle of these cells are important to understand the property of such diseases. METHODS As laser scanning cytometry (LSC) is a useful tool to evaluate the morphology of the cells fixed on the slide glass together with the quantitative analys...