A 63-year-old woman presented with Raynaud's phenomenon and extensive cold-induced livedo reticularis. A skin biopsy showed no abnormality of the blood vessels but the blood contained high titres of a very unusual autoantibody against the M blood group, most active at low temperatures. An IgM cryoglobulin was detected, and anti-M activity was found in this fraction. The cells of the patient wer...

BACKGROUND Drug-induced immune haemolytic anaemia (DIHA) is difficult to diagnose, and its true incidence remains obscure. Here, we present cases of DIHA identified at our institute over the last two decades. METHODS Serological tests were performed according to standard procedures. Detection of drug-dependent antibodies was performed in the presence and absence of the relevant drug and/or th...

Drug-induced immune hemolytic anemia is considered to be rare but is likely underrecognized. The consulting pathologist plays a critical role in integrating serologic findings with the clinical history, as drug-induced antibodies should be distinguished as either drug-dependent or drug-independent for appropriate clinical management. Drug-dependent antibodies (DDABs) are most commonly associate...

BACKGROUND We present the case of a patient with acute human immunodeficiency virus infection and a thrombotic microangiopathy as the first clinical manifestation, a presentation that has not, to the best of our knowledge, been previously reported. CASE PRESENTATION A 35-year-old Bolivian man presented with epistaxis and thrombocytopenia. We found microangiopathic anemia, lymphopenia, elevate...

Immunohaematological investigations were carried out in 46 patients with erythrocyte autoantibodies associated with myelodysplastic syndromes. Eight patients had refractory anaemia, 17 refractory anaemia with ring sideroblasts, 11 refractory anaemia with excess of blasts, four chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia, five refractory anaemia with excess of blasts in transformation and one could not be ...

The Colton (CO) blood group system consists of four antigens, Co(a), Co(b), Co3, and Co4, located on aquaporin-1 (AQP1), with Co(a) highly prevalent in all populations (99.8%). The Colton null phenotype, Co(a-b-), is very rare, and individuals with this phenotype lack the high-prevalence antigen Co3. To date, only six Co(a-b-) probands have been reported and four silencing alleles characterized...

OBJECTIVE To document the experience of one referral service with patients diagnosed with Evans syndrome, the treatment and response and to briefly review current treatment strategies and results. METHODS Patients enrolled in this study fulfilled criteria for Evans syndrome. Data were retrieved from the clinical files and electronic databases of the Department of Hematology, Hospital Universi...

Autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AHA) is a common complication in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). The UK LRF CLL4 trial is the largest prospective trial in CLL to examine the prognostic impact of both a positive direct antiglobulin test (DAT) and AHA. Seven-hundred seventy-seven patients were randomized to receive chlorambucil or fludarabine, alone or with cyclophosphamide (FC). The incidence p...

Polygenic IgG autoantibodies are implicated in majority of the cases of warm autoimmune hemolytic anemia (WAIHA). In some of these cases, complement (C3) proteins accompany the IgG antibodies. WAIHA mediated by C3 alone is relatively rare. We present an interesting case of WAIHA with a direct antiglobulin test (DAT) positive for C3 but negative for IgG in a 79-year-old woman and perform an anal...

A patient with warm autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA) due to predominance of immunoglobulin A (IgA) with an Rh specificity, considered to be the first case in Korea, is described. A 13-year-old male patient with severe hemolytic anemia showed a weak reactivity (1+) in the direct antiglobulin test (DAT) by using anti-IgG antiglobulin reagent. This finding, however, could not fully explain the p...