Abstract
Thalassemia is an autosomal recessive inherited blood disorder. It is prevalent in Mediterranean countries such as Sardinia, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon and also Southeast Asia. Our aim was to investigate the carrier prevalence of thalassemia and other hemoglobinopathies in adolescents who live in Muğla Province, Turkey. We analyzed retrospectively the surveys conducted at primary schools between 1997 and 2013. Complete blood count (CBC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) were used to screen for thalassemia and hemoglobinopathies. Patients were diagnosed as having thalassemia trait if the mean corpuscular volume (MCV) was ≤ 80.0 fL, mean corpuscular hemoglobin (Hb) was ≤ 27.0 pg and Hb A2 levels were ≥ 3.5%. A total of 164,814 students were analyzed. The median age of the students was 13.5 years (minimum 13.0, maximum 14.0). The total number of students with abnormal HPLC results was 5861 (3.8%). There was a significant decrease in the newborn of new thalassemia patients found with screening programs for hemoglobinopathies in Muğla Province from 1997 to 2013. The number of students with abnormal HPLC results for thalassemia, sickle cell disease and other Hb traits were 3.2, 0.15 and 0.4%, respectively. It is important to recognize that including Hb, MCV, red blood cell (RBC) count and HPLC tests for carrier screening are necessary to find hemoglobinopathies. Our study supported that the number of new patients significantly decreased using these screening programs from 1997 to 2013.