Determinants of Infections among Children with Beta-Thalassemia

Abstract

Among the inherited disorders of blood, hemoglobinopathy and thalassemia constitute a major bulk of non-communicable genetic diseases in India. The carrier frequency of hemoglobinopathy varies between 3 and 17% in different population of India. The cumulative gene frequency of the three most predominant abnormal hemoglobin, i.e. Sickle cell, haemoglobin D and haemoglobin E has been found to be 5.35% in India. It has been estimated that with a population of 1000 million and a birth rate of 25 per thousand, there would be about 45 million carriers and about 15,000 infants born with hemoglobinopathies in India. Patients in our hospital were receiving triple saline washed packed red blood cells (RBCs) which is routinely screened for HIV, HbsAg, HCV, Syphilis and Malaria in the hospital blood bank. Some of the patients in our study also received blood transfusion from other hospitals at times whenever blood was not available in our hospital. Results: UTI was the most common infection among both splenectomised and non splenectomised thalassemic patients followed by respiratory tract. Gram negative bacteria were the predominant organism causing infection among both splenectomised and non splenectomised patient. Conclusion: In our study, Hypersplenism has no statistically significant correlation between hypersplenism and infections.