Ratio of hemoglobin to mean corpuscular volume: A new index for discriminating between iron deficiency anemia and thalassemia trait

BACKGROUND Iron deficiency anemia(IDA)and thalassemia trait(TT)are the most common microcytic and hypochromic anemias.Differentiation between mild TT and early IDA is still a clinical challenge.AIM To develop and validate a new index for discriminating between IDA and TT.METHODS Blood count data from 126 patients,consisting of 43 TT patients and 83 IDA pa-tients,was retrospectively analyzed to develop a new index formula.This formula was further validated in another 61 patients,consisting of 48 TT patients and 13 IDA patients.RESULTS The new index is the ratio of hemoglobin to mean corpuscular volume.Its sen-sitivity,specificity,accuracy,Youden’s Index,area under the receiver operating characteristic curve,and Kappa coefficient in discriminating between IDA and TT were 93.5%,78.4%,83.3%,0.72,0.97,and 0.65,respectively.CONCLUSION This new index has good diagnostic performance in discriminating between mild TT and early IDA.It requires only two results of complete blood count,which can be a very desirable feature in under-resourced scenarios.

Development and validation of a prognostic model for patients with hepatorenal syndrome:A retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND Hepatorenal syndrome(HRS)is a severe complication of cirrhosis with high mortality,which necessitates accurate clinical decision.However,studies on prognostic factors and scoring systems to predict overall survival of HRS are not enough.Meanwhile,a multicenter cohort study with a long span of time could be more convincing.AIM To develop a novel and effective prognostic model for patients with HRS and clarify new prognostic factors.METHODS We retrospectively enrolled 1667 patients from four hospitals,and 371 eligible patients were finally analyzed to develop and validate a novel prognostic model for patients with HRS.Characteristics were compared between survivors and non-survivors,and potential prognostic factors were selected according to the impact on 28-d mortality.Accuracy in predicting 28-d mortality was compared between the novel and other scoring systems,including Model for End-Stage Liver Disease(MELD),Chronic Liver Failure-Sequential Organ Failure Assessment(CLIF-SOFA),and Chinese Group on the Study of Severe Hepatitis BAcute-on-Chronic Liver Failure(COSSH-ACLF).RESULTS Five prognostic factors,comprised of gender,international normalized ratio,mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration,neutrophil percentage,and stage,were integrated into a new score,GIMNS;stage is a binary variable defined by the number of failed organs.GIMNS was positively correlated with MELD,CLIFSOFA,and COSSH-ACLF.Additionally,it had better accuracy[area under the receiver operating characteristic curve(AUROC):0.830]than MELD(AUROC:0.759),CLIF-SOFA(AUROC:0.767),and COSSH-ACLF(AUROC:0.759)in the derivation cohort(P<0.05).It performed better than MELD and CLIF-SOFA in the validation cohort(P<0.050)and had a higher AUROC than COSSH-ACLF(P=0.122).CONCLUSION We have developed a new scoring system,GIMNS,to predict 28-d mortality of HRS patients.Mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration and stage were first proposed and found to be related to the mortality of HRS.Additionally,the GIMNS score showed better accuracy than MELD and CLIF-SOFA,and the AUROC was higher than that of COSSH-ACLF.