Prevalence of iron deficiency in B-thalassemia trait in Erbil governorate

Abstract EN

Background and objectives Anemia is a common clinical disorder that could be seen by clinician in Iraqi Kurdistan hospitals and private clinics, iron deficiency anemia perform the vast majority of such cases, and the prevalence of β-thalassemia trait in our community is about 7.5-8%.

We examined a consecutive cohort of patients with β-thalassemia trait to detect the frequency of iron deficiency among them.

Method A descriptive cross sectional study performed in Erbil-Rizgary teaching hospital, the study was conducted among 162 individuals with β-thalassemia trait over a period extending from October 2013 to October 2014.

The individuals had their diagnosis confirmed by a combination of blood counts and High Performance Liquid Chromatography.

They were then investigated for Iron status by determining Transferrin saturation and Serum ferritin.

Results Among the 162 individuals with β-thalassemia minor enrolled, the prevalence of iron deficiency was 34.6%.

There were no significant difference in the frequency of iron deficiency between adults and children (p = 0.99) or males and females (p= 0.477).

The mean haemoglobin (Hb) and mean corpuscular volume (MCV) were significantly lower in those with concomitant iron deficiency (ID) than those without it (p= 0.009, p= 0.021 respectively) while mean red cell distribution width (RDW) was higher among those with ID than those without ID (p = 0.01).

However, no significant differences were noted in the Hb A2 % in those with concomitant ID (p= 0.52).

Conclusions Iron deficiency is frequent among our β-thalassemia trait people, serum ferritin was low in only 16% of cases while the prevalence of ID counting on both serum ferritin and transferrin saturation (Tsat%) was 34.6%; so serum ferritin shuold not be the only ultimate tool for iron assessment among such people.