Erythrocyte deformability reduction in various pediatric hematologic diseases

BACKGROUND: Previously, hemorheology studies using Rheoscan mainly focused on chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, and endocrine disease in adults. The study using LORCA focused on erythrocyte disease. There were no studies using Rheoscan in children. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate erythrocyte deformability among various hematologic diseases occurring in children, namely, iron deficiency anemia (IDA), hereditary spherocytosis (HS), immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), and aplastic anemia (AA). METHODS: Differences between those with HS, IDA, ITP, AA and healthy controls were compared among 43 patients, comprising 7 patients with HS, 8 patients with IDA, 6 patients with AA, 9 patients with ITP, and 13 healthy controls. Erythrocyte deformability was measured using a microfluidic ektacytometer (RheoScan-D, RheoMeditech, Seoul, Korea). The erythrocyte elongation index (EI) was defined as (L-W)/(L+W), where L and W are the major and minor axes of the ellipse, respectively. RESULTS: The EI values of IDA, HS and AA were significantly decreased compared with healthy controls, but those of ITP were similar to healthy controls. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that erythrocyte deformability differed among various hematologic diseases. Further study concerning correlation in relation to the diagnostic and prognostic significance of erythrocyte deformability in hematologic disease is needed.