Coagulation inhibitors in Thalassemia

Background and Objectives Thalassemia is a hereditary anemia requiring lifelong transfusion treatment with thromboembolism as one of its side effects. In the present study, we tried to determine the activity of anticoagulant proteins in thalassemic patients. Materials and Methods This descriptive study was conducted in Adult Thalassemia Clinic in Tehran. Measurement of protein C, S, and anti thrombin III levels were done. At the same time, we did these tests on 110 normal people who were matched by age and sex as the control group. The data were analyzed with Chi-Square, Pearson and T-test by SPSS 16. Results Out of 127 patients with the mean age of 29.4 year (SD ± 10.6), 114 (89.8%) were spelenectomized. Seven patients (5.5%) had history of thrombosis with 2 of them being diagnosed as major and 5 intermedia; all of them were spelenectomized. In 61.1%, 67%, and 22.5% of thalassemic patients, the levels of protein C, protein S, and anti thrombin III decreased, respectively. We did not observe any correlation between these results and the type of thalassemia except antithrombin III (p= 0.001). Conclusions In our study, we observed significant decreased activity of protein C, S, and antithrombin III in comparison to the normal population which shows that thalassemic patients are prone to the thromboembolic events.