Anemia
Anemia increases risk of breast cancer recurrence
Women with breast cancer who developed anemia during chemotherapy had nearly three times the risk of local recurrence as those who did not develop anemia, according to a study published this week.
“We speculate that there may be an interaction between chemotherapy/radiotherapy and anemia,” study chief Dr. Peter Dubsky, from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, said in a statement.
“Both treatment modalities have been shown to be less effective in anemia patients. Since we do not see the effect in terms of relapse-free survival, the interaction with local adjuvant treatment may play a more important role,” Dubsky added.
Severe anemia in African kids has multiple causes
Severe anemia is associated with considerable illness and death in African children and the results of new study conducted in Malawi indicate that multiple causes are to blame. The information from this study could lead to new ways to prevent and treat severe anemia in African children, researchers say.
Interestingly, folate and iron deficiencies, which are widely believed to be the most common causes of severe anemia in African children, were actually not prominent causes, according to Dr. Job C. J. Calis, from the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam and colleagues.
They examined the causes of anemia by conducting a case-control study of 381 severely anemic preschool-age children and 757 children without anemia. The subjects were drawn from both urban and rural settings in Malawi.
Anemia treatment may be a double-edged sword
Erythropoietin has so far been known to doctors as a hormone that boosts red-blood-cell production. Now, a mouse study led by Lois Smith, MD, PhD, an ophthalmologist at Children’s Hospital Boston, shows it also keeps blood vessels alive and growing in the eye. The findings not only add a new function to the hormone, but also give doctors a reason to pause before prescribing it to patients with diseases affected by abnormal blood-vessel growth, such as retinopathy and cancer.
The study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation (online January 24), also found that whether the hormone is a risk or benefit depends on the timing of administration.
Smith and first author Jing Chen, PhD, worked in mice with retinopathy, an eye disease that begins when healthy blood vessels nourishing the retina die. Numerous vessels then grow in, but they are deformed. Ultimately, the deformed vessels may pull the retina off the back of the eye, causing blindness.
New anemia measure predicts risk of death in dialysis patients
A new indicator of variations in hemoglobin level over time is a strong predictor of the risk of death among patients receiving dialysis for end-stage renal disease (ESRD), reports a study in the December Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
“Hemoglobin variability—a measure of the stability of levels of hemoglobin among chronic hemodialysis patients—provides a novel way of thinking about and understanding the relationship between anemia and outcomes in ESRD,” comments Dr. Harold I. Feldman of University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, one of the study authors.
Anemia may raise stroke risk in young children
Iron-deficiency anemia is 10 times more common among young children who have suffered a stroke than among their peers who have not had a stroke, new research indicates.
Iron-deficiency anemia is known to occur in up to 8 percent of children between 1 and 3 years of age. A deficiency of iron in the diet is the most frequent cause of this anemia.
Mortality Rate Increases for Kidney Recipients with Anemia
According to a new study in American Journal of Transplantation, kidney transplant patients suffering from anemia, a treatable blood deficiency, are more likely to die or suffer from organ failure than other transplant recipients.
“During a four year period following kidney transplantation, we found that anemic patients were 70 percent more likely to die following their transplant, and two and a half times more likely to again require dialysis,” says study author Dr. Istvan Mucsi.
