Aids is now the commonest clinical condition associated with multilineage blood cytopenia in a central referral hospital in Zimbabwe

OBJECTIVE: To describe the clinical features and diagnosis of patients hospitalised and found to have multilineage peripheral blood cytopenias. DESIGN: Prospective cross sectional study. SETTING: Parirenyatwa Hospital, a central referral hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe. SUBJECTS: 231 consecutive patients whose blood parameters revealed bi- or trilinneage cytopenia during a five month period in 1996. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: 1. Blood cytopenia was described as: (a) Haemoglobin concentration = or < 100 g/L (b) Total leucocyte count = or < 3.5 x 10(9)/L (c) Platelet count = or < 100 x 10(9)/L 2. Other clinical and diagnostic features. RESULTS: The highest percentage of multilineage blood cytopenia was in the age bracket 30 to 44 years and the male to female ratio was 1.4:1. Pancytopenia was found in 32.5% of patients, while bilineage cytopenia occurred in 67.5%. The commonest bilineage pattern was the combination of anaemia and thrombocytopenia occurring in 46.3% of all study cases or 68.5% of bilineage cytopenias. Anaemia was the most frequent cytopenia; it was found in 95.2% of all study cases. CONCLUSION: The commonest condition with which multilineage blood cytopenia was associated was AIDS which was diagnosed in 25.1% of the study cases.