Prof Şinasi Özsoylu, MD, Department of Pediatrics, Hematology Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Hacettepe University, Ankara 06100 (Turkey) I have read with interest the article by Mazzucconi et al. [1] entitled ‘Danazol Therapy in Refractory Chronic Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura’ in the recent issue of the journal. I would like to bring to the authors’ attention that marked improvement of platelet ...

background: quality of life has been used as an important tool to understand illnesses impact in recent decades. idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura is a chronic disease which affects the individuals’ quality of life. the present study was conducted to compare the quality of life among idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura patients’ with healthy people. patients and methods: this was a descriptiv...

Background: Plasma exchange is first-line therapy for patients with thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP). Splenectomy is often indicated for patients with relapsing or refractory disease. Concerns exist about its efficacy and safety in these patients. We describe a series of patients whose TTP was treated with laparoscopic splenectomy. We also reviewed the literature in order to describe t...

We studied the extent to which patient characteristics influenced outcome in childhood idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura in a historical cohort of 289 children over a 20 year period (1968-87). Outcome was classified as acute or chronic depending on whether the platelet count had returned to normal (150 X 10(9)/l) by six months after diagnosis. Fifty three cases (18%) had chronic idiopathic th...

4. Özsoylu S, Allahverdi H, Laleli Y, Pirnar A. Platelet survival in childhood idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura in remission. J Pediatr 1976;89:388-390. 5. Özsoylu Ş, Karabent A, Irken G, Tuncer M. Antiplatelet antibody in childhood idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. Am J Hematol 1991;36:82-85. 6. Özsoylu Ş, Ertürk G. Oral megadose methylprednisolone for acute childhood idiopathic thromboc...

Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura is a rare thrombotic disease characterized by episodes of thrombocytopenia and microangiopathic hemolytic anemia due to disseminated microvascular thrombosis. Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura was first described in 1924 by Moschowitz as a disease presenting with a pentad of signs and symptoms (anemia, thrombocytopenia, fever, hemiparesis and hematuria). Pr...

Two brothers and one sister had three variants of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura and haemolytic uraemic syndrome (the 'TTP-HUS' complex). The sister had a chronic fatal variant of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura with severe neurological manifestation. One brother had a chronic relapsing disease but the kidneys were not affected, and the other brother had haemolytic uraemic syndrome. Th...

Neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia should be suspected in any thrombocytopenic infant born to a healthy non-thrombocytopenic mother. Nevertheless, the condition occurs in only 1 or 2/10 000 births.' More often transient neonatal immune thrombocytopenia results from maternal idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. We report the coexistence of alloimmunisation and autoimmunisation against platelet...

Although it is widely accepted that patients with immune thrombocytopenia produce platelet antibodies, the demonstration of such antibodies has been difficult and time consuming. A simple and quick enzyme linked immunoassay for platelet antibodies is presented. The platelet associated IgG is coupled with alkaline phosphatase labeled anti-IgG. The resultant complex is determined spectrophotometr...