Reticulocyte Counting in Thalassemia

The reticulocyte count (RC) is a useful parameter in the assessment of bone marrow erythropoietin activity and investigation of anemia, monitoring of therapy or as a way of checking early regeneration after marrow or stem cell transplantation. Automated methods have improved the accuracy and precision of the reticulocyte enumeration compared with manual counting. The blood analyzer, Coulter Gen S is capable of reporting complete blood count (CBC), RC and its parameters. The present study compared automated RC with those obtained by manual counting in 45 healthy subjects and 66 thalassemic patients (29 œ-thalassemia (thal), 20 s-tha1/Hb E non-splenectomy and 17 s-thal/Hb E splenectomy). There was no statistical significant difference between the two methods and the overall correlation between the two methods was r = 0.90. Splenectomized s-thal/HbE had a higher percentage, absolute RC, high light scatter reticulocyte (HLR), and MRV were significantly higher than non-splenectomized s-thal/HbE patients (p <0.005). But immature reticulocyte fraction (IRF) did not show any significant difference when with œ-thalassemia. In conclusion, we have shown good agreement between the automated reticulocyte counting and manual method. Using automated Coulter Gen S provides more useful reticulocyte parameters for evaluation of reticulocyte maturity. Keywords: reticulocyte count, thalassemia, Coulter Gen S