Recent advances in diagnosis of paragonimiasis.

Thalassemia is one of the most common genetric disroders in Thailand. The thalassemic patients have many pathophysiologic changes secondary to chronic anemia. During these last few years there have been many trails to cure or improve the anemic condition in thalassemia by using various agents, including eruthropoietin (EPO). Thus it is very important to understand the EPO response to different degree of anemia in the thalassemic patients. In this study we evaluated the EPO status in 53β-thalassemia/HbE patients, from 4-61 years old, by enzyme-linked immunosorbent asssay. The results showed that the levels of EPO in β-thalassemai/HbE patients were munch higher than in normal control subjects : mean ± SE = 527 ± 183.20 and 3.45 ± 0.47 mlU/ml respectively. The reverse correlation between the levels of EPO and hematocrit (r=-0.704) was also observed. There was also a tendency to have higher levels of EPO in β-thal.HbE children than in adults, although this was statistically insignificant. The observed versys predicted levels of EPO (log O/P ratio) showed taht most patients had good EPO response to the degreee of anemia. However, inappropirate decrease of EPO response was observed in8/40 adult patients. The EPO levels in these patients were not correlated with any physical or laboratory studies, including kidney patients, in the future, it may benefit only the patients with low EPO levels.