Samra Zafar, Mizna Arif, Mateen Akram, Ghulam Mustafa, Faheem Shahzad, Shahida Mohsin.
Evaluation of anti-erythropoietin antibodies in chronic renal failure patients undergoing hemodialysis.
Pak J Pathol Jan ;32(3):124-9.

Objective: Present study was planned to detect the anti-EPO antibodies in CRF patients undergoing hemodialysis and study its correlation with baseline parameters such as Hb, retic count and iron markers (serum Iron, Ferritin, TIBC) Material & Methods: This Cross-sectional study was conducted at Hematology Department of University of health sciences Lahore in collaboration with the dialysis center of Sheikh Zayed Hospital, Lahore from January to June 2016. Total eighty-six (86) patients, selected from hemodialysis center of Sheikh Zayed Hospital Lahore were included in the study. Complete blood count, retic count, anti-EPO antibodies, serum ferritin, serum iron, TIBC were performed after clinical history, physical exam and written consent. Data was analyzed by using SPSS 20.0 version. Results: Our results showed that 51 patients were positive for anti-EPO antibodies and 35 were negative for anti-EPO antibodies. In our study, these might be non-neutralizing antibodies because they did not have any correlation with Hb and reticulocyte count. Independent sample t-test and Mann Whitney-U test applied, showed a statistically insignificant difference (p=>0.05) regarding baseline parameters (Hb, Hct, Urea and Creatinine) between patients with positive and negative anti-EPO antibodies. Correlation analysis showed that anti-EPO antibodies did not significantly correlated with Hb, Hct, urea, creatinine, serum iron, ferritin, T-SAT% and reticulocyte count. However, a significant correlation of anti-EPO antibodies (p=0.01) was observed only with TIBC but this was a negative correlation. Conclusion: Our study shows that anemia in CKD patients undergoing hemodialysis frequently shows anti-EPO antibodies against rHuEPO therapy. However, these might be non-neutralizing antibodies because they did not have any correlation with Hb and reticulocyte count.

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