Polycythemia is defined as a venous hematocrit above 65%. The hematocrit in a newborn peaks at 2 h of age and decreases gradually after that. The relationship between hematocrit and viscosity is almost linear till 65% and exponential thereafter. Increased viscosity of blood is associated with symptoms of hypo-perfusion. Clinical features related to hyperviscosity may affect all organ systems. N...

In patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis (HD), erythropoietin (EPO) production from the kidney generally decreases and renal anemia develops. Patients without anemia, but with high serum EPO (sEPO) levels are rare among HD patients. The current study presents the case of a 67-year-old female HD patient with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) and renal cell carcinoma (RCC), ...

OBJECTIVES To understand the relationship between polycythemia and clinical outcome in patients with hypoplastic left heart syndrome following the Norwood operation. DESIGN A retrospective, single-center cohort study. SETTING Pediatric cardiovascular ICU, university-affiliated children's hospital. PATIENTS Infants with hypoplastic left heart syndrome admitted to our medical center from Se...

CONTEXT Elderly patients are at high risk of both abnormal hematocrit values and cardiovascular complications of noncardiac surgery. Despite nearly universal screening of patients for abnormal preoperative hematocrit levels, limited evidence demonstrates the adverse effects of preoperative anemia or polycythemia. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the prevalence of preoperative anemia and polycythemia and...

We used the methylcellulose-culture technique to determine the utility of the erythroid progenitor growth in vitro from nonadherent T-depleted bone marrow and peripheral blood cells in distinguishing polycythemia vera (PV) from essential thrombocythemia. Thirty patients with PV (group A) and 30 patients who presented with idiopathic marked thrombocytosis with platelet count greater than 1,000 x...

Congenital methemoglobinemia is a rare cause of cyanosis. We report a case of a girl, 17 years old with peripheral cyanosis and normal cardio-pulmonary system. She was diagnosed as a case of methemoglobinemia based on findings of polycythemia and HbM band on hemoglobin electrophoresis. We emphasize the importance of this rare entity in the differential diagnosis of cyanosis.

We previously reported that the lifestyle of evacuees significantly increased the prevalence of polycythemia compared with non-evacuees at an average of 1.6 years (2011-2012) from the previous annual health checkup before the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE). Here we analyzed how the prolonged evacuation affected the prevalence of polycythemia an average of 2.5 years (2013-2014) after the pre...

Polycythemia vera is a clonal disorder of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells. It manifests as an expansion of red cell mass. It is the most common chronic myeloproliferative neoplasm. In virtually all cases, it is characterized by a V617F point mutation in JAK2 exon 14 or less common mutations in exon 12. The landmark discovery of the autonomously activated JAK/STAT signaling pathway paved the...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Endothelin-1 has been associated with development of hypoxia-related pulmonary hypertension and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) with protection from this complication. In Chuvash polycythemia, homozygous germline von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) 598C->T leads to up-regulation during normoxia of hypoxia inducible factor-1a and several hypoxia-controlled genes including...