Chronic anemia, also known as chronic disease anemia or CDA, is a type of anemia that occurs as a result of chronic diseases that interfere with the process of forming blood cells, such as neoplasms, fungal infections, viruses or bacteria, and autoimmune diseases., mainly rheumatoid arthritis.
Due to slow-progressing diseases, there may be changes in the process of red blood cell formation and iron metabolism, resulting in anemia, which is more common in hospital patients over the age of 65.
- The main causes of chronic disease anemia are slow-moving diseases that cause progressive inflammation.
- Such as:.
In these situations, it is common for red blood cells to start circulating in the blood for less time due to disease, changes in iron metabolism and the formation of hemoglobin or bone marrow are not effective in the production of new red blood cells, which results in anemia.
It is important that people diagnosed with any type of chronic disease are monitored periodically by the doctor, through physical and laboratory examinations, to verify the response to treatment and the occurrence of sequelae, such as anemia, for example.
Specific treatment is generally not established for chronic anemia, but for the disease responsible for this change; However, when anemia is very severe, your doctor may recommend the administration of erythropoietin, which is the hormone responsible for stimulating red blood cell production., or iron supplementation depending on the result of blood formula count and serum iron and transferrin measurement.for example.Understand what transferrin is and what the result means.
Diagnosis of chronic anemia is based on the result of blood count and blood iron measurement, ferritin and transferrin, as the symptoms presented by patients are usually related to the base disease and not to the anemia itself.
Thus, to make the diagnosis of CDIA, the doctor analyzes the result of the blood formula count, which can check the decrease in the amount of hemoglobin, the variable size of the red blood cells and the morphological changes, in addition to the result of iron concentration in the blood, which in most cases is decreased and the saturation rate of the transferrin , which is also low in this type of anemia.Learn how to interpret the blood formula.