JEDDAH, 4 May 2005 — International Thalassemia Day on May 8 will raise the profile of the condition. The region — which sits squarely within the “global thalassemia belt” — has been particularly hard hit by the disease, with a higher-than-average number of people being affected.
Public awareness of thalassemia is critical to the region’s long-term strategy for battling the disease; local thalassemia groups will be supporting the event. “By marking International Thalassemia Day, we are spotlighting the disease, which afflicts so many of our people,” said Dr. Essam Doheir in Genetic & Thalassemia Center, Dubai.
People with thalassemia cannot produce enough hemoglobin, and hence need blood transfusions on a regular basis in order to survive. This can lead to an iron overload which may eventually cause fatal complications.
Most types of thalassemia can be diagnosed through specialized blood tests. Testing for the thalassemia trait in adults helps to determine if their children are likely to inherit the thalassemia trait or disease. “We want to educate the region about ways to prevent the spread of the disease, as well as new treatments for the potentially-fatal iron overload condition,” added Dr. Doheir
A year after the Saudi government began the mandatory pre-marriage blood test for thalassemia and sickle cell anemia, the Ministry of Health announced that 17,870 new cases have been identified. Assistant deputy for laboratories and blood banks affairs at the ministry, Dr. Obaidallah Alderees, said the ministry’s 34 blood screening centers around the country performed a total of 23,6164 tests for men and women about to get married.
In the tests, 7,407 (3.1 percent) tested positive. Of them, 3 percent were carriers and 0.1 percent afflicted by the disease.
The highest incidence of thalassemia cases is in the Eastern Province with 3,753 or 19.4 percent of those tested in the province, followed by Al-Ahsa.
A recent medical gathering in the Gulf discussed new alternatives to the treatment of iron overload in thalassemia patients. One treatment — ICL670 or EXJADE — is currently under development by Novartis and is reported to be well tolerated and effective in producing clinically relevant reductions in liver iron concentration, an indicator for total body iron content in patients with chronic iron overload due to regular blood transfusions.
As a once-daily oral treatment, EXJADE is designed to be easier to use and more convenient than deferoxamine (Desferal), the current standard iron chelating therapy and which typically requires slow infusion by pump over ten to twelve hours daily, five to seven days per week.
“News that the EXJADE therapy could become available soon across the Middle East is very encouraging, because it has the promise to free patients from the burden of daily patient-assisted therapy,” said Dr. Doheir.
