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.