Clinical perspectives, immunohematologic insights, and transfusion management in IgA-associated autoimmune hemolytic anemia
Published Online: Sep 22, 2022
Page range: 82 - 89
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21307/immunohematology-2022-047
Keywords
© 2022 S.S. Das et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA) due to warm-reacting IgA autoantibodies is rare. Here, we explored the clinical and immunohematologic characteristics of patients suffering from IgA-associated warm AIHA (WAIHA) and their transfusion management. The 9-year study included 214 patients with WAIHA who were further classified into two groups: (1) IgA-associated WAIHA and (2) non–IgA-associated WAIHA. Clinical and laboratory details were obtained from patient files and the Hospital Information System. All immunohematologic investigations were performed following standard operating procedures and established protocols. Among the 214 patients with WAIHA, 17 (7.9%) belonged to the IgA-associated group; of these, two IgA-only WAIHA cases were found. The mean hemoglobin in this group was 5.58 g/dL, and 15 (88.2%) of these patients received a total of 32 units of packed red blood cell (RBC) transfusions.