Study of zinc and copper in patients with beta thalassemia major and splenctomized in Kirkuk city

Abstract EN

Beta thalassemia major is one of the common diseases in the world; it is one of health problems among children in Iraq.

The disease leads to hemolytic anemia due to reduction of beta globin chains.

Zinc and copper are important trace elements for synthesis of metalloproteins of hemoglobin enzymes.

As zinc and copper are essential trace for synthesis of DNA; it is important to show their effect on severity of the disease among thalassemic patients.

This study was performed during the period from November 2014 to June 2015.

A total of 100 β-thalassemia major patients were enrolled in the current study; and patients were from the Thalassemia center in Azadi Teaching Hospital and 30 healthy children were taken as a control group.

The blood samples were collected from 46 males and 54 females of different ages, ranging from (1-18) years.

The level of serum zinc and copper were measured using spectrophotometer method.

Comparison between thalassemic patients with control group; the results shown that there was high significant increased (p>0.01) in serum level of copper (148.69±28.90) while in serum level of zinc was decreased in thalassemic patients (60.52±10.63).

Statistically there was no significant difference between different age groups and gender.

The copper and zinc values decreased in splenctomized patients in comparison with non-splenctomized patients.

The present study concluded that the level of serum copper increased while the level of serum zinc decreased in β-thalassemia major patients, this is also confirmed by other studies.