International Blood Research & Reviews

Background: Sickle cell disease (SCD) remains a major health burden in Sub-Saharan Africa and the management requires regular monitoring of the patients. The monitoring includes routine assessment of haematological parameters and any deviation can best be appreciated when steady state values are previously known. This study evaluated the patients with SCD in steady state to determine certain haematological parameters (particularly the full blood count values).

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study. One hundred and forty-three (known) SCD subjects in steady state and thirty controls (HB phenotype AA) had their full blood count parameters evaluated using haematology auto analyser – white blood cell (WBC), granulocyte (GRA) and platelet (PLT) counts as well as haemoglobin concentration (HB), mean cell volume (MCV) and mean cell haemoglobin (MCH). The participants were regrouped into adult and paediatric groups and their results analysed accordingly.

Results: The adult SCD patients had their mean haematological values as follows: HB 7.7±2.5 g/L, MCV 77.5±19.3 fl, MCH 25.1±6.5 pg, WBC 12.0±5.9x10⁹ /L and PLT 306.6±169.3x10⁹ /L. Their paediatric counterparts had the following mean values: HB 6.9±1.3 g/L, MCV 77.4±11.0 fl, MCH 24.6±3.7 pg, WBC 16.0±6.9x10⁹ /L and PLT 329.1±101.9x10⁹ /L. The adult patients had significantly higher HB (p<0.05) and lower WBC (p<0.05) than the paediatric patients.  

Conclusion: This study has therefore provided some steady state haematological values of both paediatric and adult SCD patients in our locality and could be useful in establishing reference values.