Haemoglobin Bristol-Alesha in a child with non-spherocytic severe haemolytic anaemia and marked anisochromic poikilocytosis with basophilic stippling and amorphous intracellular content

Here we describe a retrospective study of a 10-year-old girl, adopted from India, and referred to the Rare Anemias Unit for the diagnosis of a severe haemolytic anaemia of unknown etiology. Blood film examination revealed markedly abnormal red cell morphology characterised by a mixture of very pale (hypochromic) cells with basophilic stippling and macrocytic cells containing coarse basophilic dots and an amorphous material of unknown origin. With a presumptive diagnosis of pyruvate kinase deficiency (PK), the patient had been splenectomised at 7 years of age with a partial recovery of the anaemia and a decrease of the blood transfusion rate. Three years after splenectomy, the patient was revisited and a haemoglobin stability test was performed with a positive result. Accordingly, the correct diagnosis was an unstable haemoglobinopathy. Targeted next generation sequencing (t-NGS) revealed haemoglobin Bristol-Alesha, a hyper unstable haemoglobinopathy associated with severe haemolytic anaemia. Since unstable haemoglobins do not necessarily have specific red cell morphological abnormalities, our findings reinforce the need to include, the haemoglobin stability test, in the first diagnostic approach of hemolytic anaemias of unknown etiology.