PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF METAL LEVELS IN THALASSEMIA PATIENTS

Studies due to biological screening in toxicological research are importantfor the asssessment of human health risk considering environmental pollution.Toxic metals are one of the serious groups of environmental contaminants.Beta-thalassemia is a form of thalassemia that is caused by a deficiency of betaglobin related to any of more than 200 point mutations in functionallyimportant regions of the beta globin gene on chromosome 11. This deficiencybrings about an accumulation of unpaired α-globin chains and an inequalitybetween α and β globin chains, that develops an extensive range of thalassaemiaphenotypes including severe anemia and clinically asymptomatic individuals.Iron is an essential element for many biological and cellular processes in atrace amount, which is a part of numerous hemoproteins and non-heme ironproteins. Differences in iron metabolism can alter lead toxicokinetics. Thus,genes related to iron metabolism could modify lead toxicity. From this point of view, the present studyintended to measure toxic and essentials metal levels in 100 geneticallyunrelated thalassemia patients and 100 healthy unrelated controls. Hence, itwas also aimed to investigate whether or not iron-deficiency inbeta-thalassemia patients was associated with blood metal levels. Measurementwas performed by Atomic Absportion Spectrometry. Finally, preliminary assessments of metallevels in thalassemia patients were conducted.This study was supported by the Scientificand Technical Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), Project number 114S312.