What is aplastic anemia? How to treat it?

Aplastic anemia is a bone marrow hematopoietic failure caused by a variety of causes. The most common cause is a decrease in the number of hematopoietic stem cells or a defect in hematopoietic function, which triggers the body's immune antibody response. So what is aplastic anemia?

Aplastic anemia

1. Acute aplastic anemia is characterized by acute onset, rapid progression, and short course. Anemia is often not obvious in the early stage of the disease, but as the disease progresses, anemia progressively worsens, and there are obvious symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, and palpitations. Even with massive blood transfusions, anemia is difficult to improve. Bleeding and infection are often the main symptoms at the onset of the disease.

2. Chronic aplastic anemia is characterized by slow onset, slow progression, and long course of the disease. Anemia is the first and main manifestation. Blood transfusion can improve anemia symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, and palpitations. Bleeding is generally mild, mostly superficial bleeding such as skin and mucous membranes. Deep bleeding is rare. There may be mild infection and fever during the course of the disease, and respiratory infections are more common and easier to control. If the infection is severe and the high fever persists, it often leads to worsening bone marrow failure and transformation into severe aplastic anemia.

Treatment of aplastic anemia is often based on the severity and cause of the disease.

1. Transfusion therapy: Transfusion of red blood cells and platelets is necessary for patients with aplastic anemia to maintain blood cell counts. The goal of blood transfusion therapy is to improve the patient's anemia symptoms and relieve hypoxia. It is not necessary to restore the hemoglobin level to normal. Long-term blood transfusion should be avoided to prevent transfusion diseases.

2. Immunosuppressive therapy: The immunosuppressants commonly used to treat aplastic anemia include cyclosporine, antithymocyte globulin and antilymphocyte globulin.

3. Bone marrow transplantation: Since there were cases of patients with aplastic anemia being cured by bone marrow transplantation, bone marrow transplantation for the treatment of aplastic anemia has become an important research topic in transplant centers at home and abroad, and a large number of research results have been reported. In recent years, there have been increasing reports of using peripheral blood stem cell transplantation collected after cytokine mobilization to replace bone marrow transplantation, and there is a trend of replacing bone marrow transplantation.