A woman with Macrocytic Anaemia and confusion

[sazzyb]

There's an article in this week's BMJ about an elderly woman who has Macrocytic Anaemia and confusion.

Interesting that in Section 4 'How should this condition be investigated? ' it states

'The choice of method for measuring vitamin B12 is controversial.,,'

'Levels of vitamin B12 tend to vary between method used...'

'a clear gold standard test is lacking.'

bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g43...

[Hidden]

Interesting article to read, thank you! Marre.

[Mrs_Somerset]

Hi Marre,

yes - the way B12 is tested does leave it open for sufferes to be overlooked. which is silly as the symptoms matter - if the doc does not think a person has PA becasue the IF / PC antibody test came back negative - they then feel it is OK to tell the patient to go away, and yet they are not more well than when they first came to them.

Doctors know so little about PA, and in my personal experience they have no intention of ever learning about it - it is not on any mandated training course, they get no additional funding for it -t hey simply consider it a rare disease that no one knows about ( quote from my own very special doctor, and I use the term "special" in the most unpleasant sense)

[Belle126]

I just finished reading this article and it is jammed packed with information. I believe the information will not only help me but hopefully my father who suffers terribly from peripheral neuropathy. Even though peripheral neuropathy was not mentioned in the article the authors did go in to quite a lot of detail on B12 with detailed explanations that were fascinating and a definite learning experience for me. Thank you so much for posting this!