Iron Deficiency Anaemia

[Doubleh1]

Hi all I am new to the community and was wonder if anyone can help or as experienced anything like the problems that I currently experiencing at the moment?

I am a 20 year old female suffering with transfusion dependant Anaemia.

I am currently have blood transfusions weekly this as now been going on for over 2 years.

No one seems to know why or really cares?

I have had a colonoscopy an endoscopy and a camera pill but nothing as been found I am told I have a bleed somewhere but surly with the amount of blood I must be loosing then you would have thought it would easy to find.

My latest blood test results are as follows

HB 60

WBC 4.7

PLATELETS 284

RBC 2.49

MCV 77.9

HCT 0.194

MCH 24.1

MCHC 309

RDW 16.2

LYMPHOCYTES 0.81

FERRITTIN 6

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

[Gambit62 Administrator]

unfortunately PA is actually a vitamin deficiency caused by an absorption problem in the gut - vitamin in question is B12 - rather than an iron based problem. Some PA sufferers do experience iron based anaemia but my guess would be that this is again due to problems absorbing iron from food - though the main mechanism for B12 absorption is very specialised there are elements that can affect general absorption of nutrients.

The anaemia caused by being B12 deficiency is down to lack of B12 being available to make sure that blood cells are produced properly so they tend to be deformed - slightly rounder and larger than normal and less efficient at carrying oxygen. However, many people with a B12 deficiency don't actually have any signs of anaemia at all and it is other uses of B12 that cause them problems first - eg effects on nervous system.

bleeds can be very difficult to tie down. The gut is the most common place for bleeds to be occuring. Even though you are losing significant amounts of blood if you need transfusions that often the bleed itself might still be relatively small - really sorry can't be of more help. Hope that something happens that means the cause of the bleed is identified and can be corrected soon.

[Doubleh1 in reply to Gambit62]

Thank you for your reply I will carry looking.

I am just so desperate to find out what's wrong and thought maybe someone may have experience similar symptoms as I have not really been diagnosed with anything.

[Gambit62 Administrator in reply to Doubleh1]

sorry that I wasn't able to help.

It might be worth looking into B12. I think there have been cases of B12 deficiency that have been misidentified and treated with blood transfusions - though in general the interaction with transfusions is the fact that it makes it very difficult to evaluate B12 levels because those will also be coming from the transfused blood not yours.

May be suggest it (though they may laugh) and see if they will consider trialing B12 to see if that has any impact.

hospital.blood.co.uk/media/...