EPO Hormone

Hi


Is it important to measure the EPO hormone for thal patients as one of the routine tests that are being performed? If there is a defiency giving it will improve the case or it wouldn't work??

manal

Hi Manal,

Erythropoietin stimulates the Bone Marrow to produce RBCs. However, in case of Thal. Majors since it is the marrow's fault with the mutated genes; this will only stimulate to produce more useless RBCs and make the marrow over work with increase risk of bone deformation.

Thanks Sajid for your reply, but why it is given sometimes as injections to thal ? Does it have any other function rather than stimulating the RBCs production??

manal

Hi Manal,

Sajid has explained it well. It only stimulates even more bad red blood cell production, so the amount present isn't tested. Why it isn't tested when given to stimulate an increase in Hb  is explained at labtestsonline.

http://www.labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/erythrop/faq.html

Why isn’t erythropoietin measured to monitor erythropoietin drug therapy?  It is not used because it is the effect on the bone marrow – reflected by increased RBC and reticulocyte production and increasing hemoglobin – that is important in the resolution of anemia, not the concentration of erythropoietin in the blood. The amount needed will vary from person to person depending on their condition and the responsiveness of their bone marrow.

It is the effects that are important when given to patients to increase Hb. In Intermedia, it is sometimes used because intermedias are producing some good RBC's. I recently saw a study that showed it worked in combination with hydroxyurea to cause a cumulative effect, increasing Hb more than either drug did by itself.

Thanks Andy for the reply, this is a very interesting

manal

My dad worked for Cilag AG (now merged to Jansen-Cilag which cost my dad the job ) a swiss pharma company. They tested their Eprex brand of EPO for Thal. and my dad was obviously interested; it showed mixed results; some patients had a minor benefit but the cost of these at that time were ridiculously high compared to the gain in Hb. while it totally failed in many patients.

I doubt they knew about the Intermedia factor in detail about 15 odd yrs ago; so it could be the reason for some patients to benefit; furthermore a slight variation in Hb could be due to other factors like dehydration and lab errors. Like once my HB increased instead of going down between two tests a few months ago