A longitudinal study by a team of investigators from the Departments of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania provides insight into the extent to which clinicians can expect to improve chronic anemia in sickle cell disease (SCD) with hydroxyurea alone. They published their findings in Blood Red Cells & Iron.
In written remarks forwarded to Heme Today, the senior author of the published study, Julia Xu, MD, MScGH, stated, “we found that hydroxyurea, the standard of care treatment for SCD, produced only modest improvements in anemia.”
The study cohort included 82 patients with SCD who received hydroxyurea and were subsequently monitored for hemoglobin response. At one month following the start of therapy, the investigators found that the patients’ average hemoglobin level had…