Repetitive reddish discoloration of urine in a female adolescent following short-distance walking on a smooth road: Questions.

A previously healthy 15-year-old girl was evaluated following five episodes of reddish urine discoloration after walking for approximately 30 min on a smooth roadway. In each episode, the discoloration lasted for four to five urinations and followed by normal urine dipstick tests. No other exercise-produced urine discoloration and no other symptoms were reported.

Evaluation of liver fibrosis in patients with thalassemia: the important role of hyaluronic acid.

Patients with transfusion-dependent thalassemia major often develop liver fibrosis due to liver iron overload and/or hepatitis virus C (HCV) infection. Hyaluronic acid (HA) plays a prominent role in the pathogenesis of liver fibrosis and the elevation of serum HA concentration is due to either increased synthesis by inflammatory cells and hepatic stellate cells or impaired degradation by sinusoidal endothelial cells (SECs) and thus is proposed as a non-invasive biomarker of liver fibrosis either by itself and/or included in the Hepascore formula. In this study we evaluated prospectively a screening of liver fibrosis in 201 adult patients aged 19-54 years with transfusion-dependent thalassemia major, based on HA measurements.

Age, beta thalassaemia trait, and iron-deficient anaemia significantly affect reticulocyte indices in pre-school children.

Background: Reticulocyte indices are easy to obtain, low cost parameters and have gained interest in the field of diagnosing anaemias of childhood.

Methods: We assessed distribution, age and gender variation, relation to indices of iron metabolism and diagnostic performance of reticulocyte haemoglobin content (CHr), percentage of microcytic reticulocytes (micro_r), percentage of hypochromic reticulocytes (hypo_r), and percentage of reticulocytes with low CHr (low_CHr) in 386 pre-school children classified in four groups: healthy, iron deficiency (ID), iron deficiency anaemia (IDA), and beta-thalassaemia carriers (beta-thal).

Results: Age had a positive effect in CHr (Spearman's rho = 0.

Effect of inflammation induced by prolonged exercise on circulating erythroid progenitors and markers of erythropoiesis.

Background: Exercise in humans augments the mobilization of circulating hematopoietic progenitor cells (CD34(+)) from the bone marrow. We investigated the effect of inflammation on erythroid marrow activity by mobilization of erythroid progenitor cells (EPs) along with soluble markers of erythropoiesis.

Methods: Ten healthy athletes who participated in an ultradistance foot race participated in the study.