الفهرس 
Introduction and Aim of the workOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The thalassemias are one of the most common single gene disorders and form a heterogeneous group of inherited disorders of hemoglobin synthesis. There are two basic groups of thalassemic disorders: alpha thalassemia and beta thalassemia (Butwick et al., 2005).
Annexins are a family of proteins that bind to acidic phospholipids, particularly phosphatidylserine (PS) (Ernst, 1993; Raynal and Pollard, 1994). Annexin V was used as a marker for PS positivity, while antiglycophorin – A (CD235a) is a sialoglycoprotein expressed on the surface of erythrocytes (Chasis and Mohandas, 1992; Catimel et al., 1993) and was employed as marker for intact red cells and red cell derived microvesicles (Setty et al., 2000)
Eryptosis, the suicidal death of erythrocytes, is characterized by cell shrinkage, membrane blebbing and cell membrane phospholipid scrambling with phosphatidylserine exposure at the cell surface (Foller et al., 2008).
The aim of the present study is to determine eryptosis percentage in splenectomized and non-splenectomized β-thalassemia major (β-TM) patients and their relationship to the degree of severity in β-TM patients.
The study comprised 46 patients with β-TM and 17 healthy volunteers with matched age and sex were taken as a control. None of the patients had been hospitalized and received a blood transfusion for at least one month prior to the start of the study or during the sampling period.
All patients and healthy controls were subjected to some laboratory investigations as CBC, liver function (ALT, AST, Serum albumin and Serum bilirubin), serum ferritin, Hb.electrophoresis and determination of eryptosis percentage by flow cytometry technique.
Our studies showed that eryptosis percentage were significantly elevated in the β-TM patients compared to control group.
There was no correlation between eryptosis percentage, hematological data and HbF% in β-TM patients. On the other hand there was positive correlation between eryptosis% and ferritin.
from this study we concluded that it is possible to use two-color flow cytometric technique (Annexin V-FITC and glycophorin A-PE) as biological markers for assessments of eryptosis percentage in β-TM patients. The presence of high levels of eryptosis percentage is associated with degree of severity in β-TM patients. Moreover, regular monitoring of eryptosis percentage and estimation of proper ferritin level may be of important value to protect thalassemic patients from pathological complications.