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Aplastic anemia: epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and health economics

Published on August 31, 2023   30 min

A selection of talks on Immunology

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0:00
Hello. My name is Shinji Nakao. I'm now working at the Japanese Red Cross Ishikawa Blood Center as the Director General. I'm going to talk about the epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment and health economics of aplastic anemia.
0:19
Aplastic anemia, AA, is a syndrome characterized by pancytopenia and bone marrow hypoplasia caused by a persistent decrease in the number of hematopoietic stem cells, HSCs. There are two forms. One is congenital, and the other is acquired. The decrease of HSCs is mostly induced by an immune attack against HSCs in acquired AA. In patients with congenital AA, germline mutations cause functional abnormalities in HSCs, leading to the failure to produce mature blood cells.
1:04
The estimated annual incidence of AA is 1.5 - 2.3 per million in Western countries, while in Asian countries the incidence is 3.0 - 7.5 per million, two to three times higher than in Western countries. There are two age peaks. One is around 20 years of age, and the other is around 70 years.
1:32
The first patient was described by Paul Ehrlich in 1888. Louis Henri Vaquez named the disease "anemia aplastique" in 1904. AA is not really only an anemia, but instead is a pancytopenia in which leukopenia, anemia and thrombocytopenia are almost always found, and is defined as a syndrome caused by a persistent decrease in the number of HSCs without any extrinsic factors, such as chemotherapies and chemicals. The top photo of this slide shows blood collection tubes
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Aplastic anemia: epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and health economics

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