Biomedical Research

Sickle cell disorder is a major hemoglobinopathy associated with hemolytic anemia. It mani-fests either as less severe heterozygous or severe homozygous form. Evidences suggest in-volvement of oxidative stress in this disorder. Hence we made an attempt to find out any pa-thogenic impact of oxidative stress in this disease. From the rural area of central India 80 heterozygous and 20 homozygous cases were registered as two separate groups. Along with this 100 and 66 age and sex matched healthy individuals were included as controls against these two groups of cases respectively. Malondialdehyde and superoxide dismutase activity in serum and catalase activity in erythrocytes were assayed as markers of oxidative stress. Hemoglobin level and reticulocyte count were measured to assess the severity of hemolysis. Statistical comparisons were made between cases and corresponding control levels for all these parameters. Also study was done to find any association between oxidative and hema-tological parameters.The result showed overall oxidative and hemolytic stress in both group of cases. However, except for malondialdehyde which showed significant increase in both the forms of the disease, all other parameters studied showed significant difference only in homozygous but not in heterozygous cases. Also significant association between oxidative parameters and hematological response was recorded only in homozygous cases. Finally li-pid peroxidation was found to be the strongest predictor variable for hemolytic stress re-sponse. Results indicate association of oxidative pathology with the severe form of this dis-order and advocate oxidative damage as the putative pathogenic determinant in this disor-der.

Author(s): Kalyan Goswami and Debes Ray
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