Abstract
Introduction: There are few studies that investigated whether Down syndrome (DS) interferes with references values for complete blood counts (CBC) test in children with the syndrome. Objective: This study aimed to analyze the results of CBC performed in children with DS. Patients and methods: Data from CBC of DS children were included; at the time of examination they were aged between 2 and 10 years and had no clinical signs and/or symptoms of infectious disease. The hematological parameters analyzed were: total number of erythrocytes (RBC), hemoglobin (Hb) concentration, hematological indices, platelet count, and total number of leucocytes. Additionally, we compared the collected parameters according to gender and age of the children studied. Results: A total of 203 CBC (100 girls and 103 boys) were evaluated. In general, no significant differences were observed in studied parameters between the values found in samples of DS children and the values described in the literature as a reference for children in this age group. No difference in the prevalence of anemia was observed in relation to gender (p = 0.33), 14/103 (13.6%) boys, and 11/100 (11%) girls had anemia. However, the Hb and hematological indices values found in boys was significantly lower than in girls (p < 0.001). Conclusion: This investigation is the first one in Brazil to present and analyze the CBC results of DS children, reporting that their hematological indices are within the expected range for children without DS. Additionally, it was found that 12.3% of them had anemia.
Highlights
There are few studies that investigated whether Down syndrome (DS) interferes with references values for complete blood counts (CBC) test in children with the syndrome
It was observed that the erythrocyte values found in samples from DS children are similar to those described for children without DS[10]
The mean hemoglobin was 13.7 ± 1.59 g/dl and the hematological indices, mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH) and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC) were close/similar to the values reported for children without DS of the same age[10], the same occurs with the total number of platelet count (Table 1)
Summary
There are few studies that investigated whether Down syndrome (DS) interferes with references values for complete blood counts (CBC) test in children with the syndrome. The clinical manifestations described in DS patients are similar to those of aging process, with higher prevalence of bacterial and viral infections, autoimmune diseases, and early progression to dementia, after 40 years of age. DS fetuses shows changes of the parameters used in the evaluation of thymic function: abnormal thymic anatomy and low lymphocyte T receptor excision circles (TREC) count, which are used as thymic function markers. This is likely to occur because some controlling genes of division and proliferation of thymocytes are present on chromosome 21. It is not yet entirely clear, but it is possible that in addition to abnormalities of the thymus, T and B lymphocytes are functionally defective[4, 5]
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