COVID-19 Associated Coagulopathy in Beta Thalassemia Patients: Letter to the Editor

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious virus that can bring about severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Thalassemia syndrome refers to diverse degrees of flaws in α or/and ꞵ globin chains production in erythroid cells. As thalassemia disease is one of the most prevalent problems in Central and Southeast Asia and also can be found in Europe, North America, and Australia, the increasing awareness of momentous risk factors may be supportive for decision making and managing thalassemia patients with a severe clinical picture are required. Some evidence has shown that new emerging COVID-19 can be the origin of serious hitches encompassing the increased possibility of multiple microvascular thrombotic events. COVID-19–associated coagulopathy (CAC) may occur through endotheliopathy, endothelial cell infection and endotheliitis induced by COVID-19 subsequent to inflammatory cell infiltration and endothelial cell apoptosis. Although a few researches on thalassemia population have not propounded thalassemia disease as a significant risk factor for poor clinical outcomes after COVID-19, the care and treatment of the patients who are inflicted by the novel coronavirus should be performed more cautiously due to existing vast variety of clinical glitches which are frequent amid severe cases of thalassemia. In the long run, further data regarding CAC in hospitalized thalassemia cases with COVID-19 infection are needed to reveal the rate of coagulopathy and also determine the necessity of performing coagulation testing counting D-dimer, prothrombin time, activated partial thromboplastin time, fibrinogen level, and platelet count.