A study of Iron store in Bone marrow and its correlation in various anemia

Abstract

incidence of anaemia is a very common but prevalence of anaemia is disproportionately high in developing countries. With proper clinical history, haematological and bone marrow examination findings proper evaluation and management of patients with anaemia can be made. Microscopic examination of bone marrow aspirate is the gold standard for assessing marrow iron store. However, conventional Gale’s method assesses iron in marrow fragments alone which provides little valuable information about functional iron deficiency seen in many chronic diseases. Thisstudy is conducted to measure iron grading using perl’s Prussian blue staining in various hematological conditions. A descriptive study of Perl’s Prussian blue stained bone marrow aspirate smears of 130 patients with anaemia. A CBC, Reticulocyte count and Bone marrow iron was assessed by the Gale’s method in this study.After excluding 9 cases of dry tap, 121 cases were evaluated in our study. 78.57% of cases (61 cases) diagnosedas microcytic anaemia had iron store very low (grade 0 and 1). In patients with megaloblastic anaemia (15 cases), 46.7% of cases (7 cases) had iron store grade was normal, but in 8 cases iron grade was low. In patients with dimorphic anaemia (23 cases), 78.3% of cases (18 cases) had iron store grade was normal.Bone marrow aspiration with application of Prussian blue stain is useful to investigate patients with suspected iron deficiency anaemia, anaemia of chronic disease, megaloblastic anaemia and acute leukemia.