The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Premarital tests can prevent thalassemia

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Monday, Nov 29, 2010
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Premarital tests can prevent thalassemia

Swathi.V

Thalassemia could prove to be a major challenge worldwide
A simple test to check HbA2 levels in blood can prevent lifelong trouble

HYDERABAD: Amrutha, a fourteen-month-old, weeps piteously tugging at her mother's sari. Lying tummy-down and pressed firmly in place by three hands that clasped her tender legs and back, she wails herself hoarse from the intense pain of being injected with new blood.

Mother K. Rani too is a worried woman, but not for the pain her little one is put to. A few months hence, her husband, a labour contractor, will have to shell out anywhere between Rs.5,000 and Rs.10,000 per month to afford their daughter's Thalassemia treatment.

Expensive drugs

Little Amrutha, undergoing blood transfusion at the Thalassemia and Sickle Cell Society's Day Care Centre, is one among the thousands afflicted with the genetic disorder that vitiates the production of haemoglobin. If untreated, it could result in death within the first year of birth. Blood transfusions once in four or six weeks, and expensive drugs to check the iron overload in the body, are absolutely necessary to sustain life.

Both Amrutha and Rani would have been saved of the trauma had the latter and her husband undergone premarital tests to ascertain their Thalassemia status. A simple test to check the HbA2 levels in blood would have prevented lifelong trouble, says Dr. Suman Jain, Secretary of the Society.

“Thalassemia is an inherited disorder that could be transmitted to children only if both the parents are carriers. Premarital tests conducted on couples can preclude majority of Thalassemia cases,” she says.

Alternatively, an expectant mother could go for a prenatal CVS (Chorionic Villus Sampling) during 11 {+t} {+h} week of pregnancy to know the genetic status of the foetus. Accordingly, she may decide to terminate the pregnancy.

If both the parents are carriers, the child has 25 per cent likelihood of becoming Thalassemic, 50 per cent of being a carrier, and 25 per cent of being normal. Good news is that a Thalassemia patient, if married to a normal person, will give birth to only carriers. On the contrary, marriage between two Thalassemics could be disastrous.

One worrisome fact is that nearly five per cent of the world population are carriers, or in other words, have Thalassemia Minor. India, with its 3.5 crore carriers, spawns about 10,000 to 12,000 Thalassemia Major children every year. For Andhra Pradesh, the figure is about 650 per year. It is growing by the year due to lack of awareness about the importance of premarital tests. Thalassemia could prove to be a major challenge worldwide in the coming years, for the huge requirement of blood for transfusion.

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