Aplastic anaemia

What it is

Aplastic anemia is bone marrow failure, and pancytopenia is what it produces. In the approach to anemia it is found through a low hemoglobin with a normal MCV of 80-100 and a low reticulocyte count, meaning decreased production with retics under 2%, and then through pancytopenia. The other anemia chart puts it among the normocytic causes, 80-99, alongside BM fibrosis and tumor.

Causes and risk

Under pancytopenia it is named first, with the rest behind it: MDS, myelofibrosis, leukemia, TB, amyloidosis and sarcoidosis, drugs such as chemotherapy, bone marrow infiltration, and PNH. Among the causes of neutropenia it is an acquired primary cause, grouped with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria and myelodysplastic syndrome. That primary group opens with bone marrow failure and also holds the acute leukemias, and its familial arm holds Schwachman diamond syndrome, dyskeratosis congenita, Fanconi anemia, severe congenital neutropenia and cyclic neutropenia. The secondary causes of neutropenia are severe sepsis, medication effect, immune process, viral infection and ethnic neutropenia. Fanconi anemia is a named cause of aplastic anemia. It occurs due to a DNA repair defect, and the result is bone marrow failure. Fifth disease is another: it can precipitate aplastic crises, and aplastic anemia is listed as its complication.