We have shown previously that liquid extraction surface analysis of dried blood spots coupled to high resolution top-down MS may be applied for the diagnosis of hemoglobin (Hb) variants FS, FAS, FC, FAC, FAD in newborn samples. The objective of the current work was to determine whether the structural variant HbE, compound heterozygote variants FSC and FSD, and β-thalassemia were amenable to dia...

BACKGROUND Prevention and control of thalassemia requires simple, rapid, and accurate screening tests for carrier couples who are at risk of conceiving fetuses with severe thalassemia. METHODS Single-tube multiplex real-time PCR with SYBR Green1 and high-resolution melting (HRM) analysis were used for the identification of α-thalassemia-1 Southeast Asian (SEA) and Thai type deletions and β-th...

Oxidative damage induced by free globin chains has been implicated in the pathogenesis of the membrane abnormalities observed in alpha and beta thalassemia. We have evaluated transport of Na+ and K+ in erythrocytes of patients with thalassemias as well as in two experimental models that use normal human red blood cells, one for alpha thalassemia (methylhydrazine treatment, alpha thalassemia lik...

Hemoglobin E (HbE) is an extremely common structural hemoglobin variant that occurs at high frequencies throughout many Asian countries. It is a β-hemoglobin variant, which is produced at a slightly reduced rate and hence has the phenotype of a mild form of β thalassemia. Its interactions with different forms of α thalassemia result in a wide variety of clinical disorders, whereas its coinherit...

Advances in treatment of thalassemia have led to the aging of thalassemic patients, and consequently concern about successful reproductive outcome is augmented. Although women with thalassemia intermedia only were considered competent of achieving pregnancy, case series reveal the willingness of both thalassemia major and thalassemia intermedia women to have a family. Pregnancy in general is ch...

Thalassemia Reports (ISSN: 2039-4365) was launched in 2011 and has become the premier peer-reviewed international medical journal devoted entirely to study, diagnosis, treatment of thalassemia [...]

Thalassemia is a genetic disorder that involves abnormal haemoglobin formation. The two main categories of thalassemia are alpha and beta thalassemia that are then divided into further subcategories. While some mild forms of thalassemia might even go unnoticed and only cause mild anaemia and iron deficiency problems in patients, other more severe forms of thalassemia can even result in death. I...

Thalassemia intermedia encompasses a wide clinical spectrum of beta-thalassemia phenotypes. Some thalassemia intermedia patients are asymptomatic until adult life, whereas others are symptomatic from as young as 2 years of age. A number of clinical complications commonly associated with thalassemia intermedia are rarely seen in thalassemia major, including extramedullary hematopoiesis, leg ulce...

We prospectively compared a single-tube multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for detecting alpha-thalassemia with our current approach using 452 blood samples. Initial evaluation of 89 specimens revealed sensitivity and specificity, respectively, for the hemoglobin H inclusion body test (HbH prep) vs PCR for detecting alpha0-thalassemia carriers of 0.79 and 0.96 and for a mean corpuscular ...

I enjoyed reading Bilgen et al.’s case report, The effect of HBB: (c*+96T>C (3’UTR+1570 T>C) on the mild β-thalassemia intermedia pheonotype, in the recent issue of the Journal (2011; 28: 219-222). I congratulate the authors for exploring at the molecular level at least one of the thalassemia minima that fits well with the present clinical thalassemia nomenclature. Based on their clinical descr...