A case of red cell aplasia in a Negro child.

Up to 1964 128 cases of congenital red cell aplasia had been reported (Table). All these were in Caucasian children and this was thought to be of genetic significance (Diamond, Allen, and Magill, 1961). Since then Khatua (1964) has described an 18-month-old Indian girl with red cell aplasia, whose chest radiograph showed an enlarged thymus gland, and who responded to steroids, while Shapiro, White, Diseker, and Bentley (1964) reported the condition in a negro girl with absent left kidney and ureter, who did not respond to steroids and who died at 4 months of age with pneumonia. The present report of pure red cell aplasia is of interest, as it is possibly the result of administering phenylbutazone to the mother in the later months of pregnancy, and is only the second case to be reported in a negro child. Case Report