![]() ![]() Today the young woman is in her third year of medical school. And she never received a blood transfusion again.” Vaccinations and antibiotics helped compensate for the bacteria-removing abilities of the spleen. Her hemoglobin increased to the normal level. The result of the surgery, he said, was like “a miracle. “I knew that she would respond so well to a splenectomy.” “That’s why the transfusions weren’t working,” he says. The girl’s spleen, however, was removing too many. The spleen is one of the largest lymph organs and is responsible for, among other things, filtering out old red blood cells. That explained why blood transfusions weren’t working. Instead, she had a mutation on another gene that affected her red blood cells. It was such a kit that solved the medical puzzle of the girl who came to his office desperate for a second opinion about her anemia.Ī genetic analysis of the young patient’s DNA revealed that she didn’t have thalassemia. They are available for different formats and throughputs, as well as for manual and automated processing. “And then we use the genetic results to tailor the treatment for the patient.” QIAGEN kits provide DNA extraction to a “very high standard” for applications from life science to clinical research and diagnostics. “We do extraction for DNA from blood to a single cell,” he says. Key to this work are QIAGEN DNA extraction kits, he says. He published his findings on this new clinical syndrome in the scientific journal Blood that same year. This was an important finding, because it presents similarly to thalassemia but requires a different treatment plan. One of his major breakthroughs came in 2014, when he used next-generation sequencing to discover a mutation in the protein Krüppel-like Factor 1 (KLF1) that causes hemolytic anemia. from Oxford and completing a postdoc fellowship in molecular hematology at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine before joining Siriraj Hospital in 2004, where he’s been ever since. He also spent six years in the UK getting his Ph.D. in 1987 and then trained in pediatrics and pediatric hematology at Thailand’s Royal College of Pediatrics. Vip wants to change the trajectory of the disease by offering his patients diagnostic certainty through molecular testing.Ī native and lifelong resident of Bangkok, Vip got his M.D. That has an impact on the course of treatment. Another challenge is that different blood disorders can present similarly but have different genetic causes. It’s also hereditary.ĭespite the prevalence of such blood disorders in not only Southeast Asia, but also the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa, they’ve received limited research attention-a common occurrence in resource-limited countries like Thailand. ![]() Its symptoms range from paleness and mild anemia to jaundice, bone issues and anemia so severe that people need lifelong blood transfusions. More than 40% of the population has one of the genetic mutations responsible for thalassemia, a blood disorder of low hemoglobin production that results in shortages of red blood cells and oxygen in the bloodstream. Hematology is an especially important field in Southeast Asia because hemoglobin disorders are common. “I would love to be the person who gives the answer.” I went to see another doctor, and I didn’t get any answers. Like many of the patients Vip sees these days, her condition was a puzzle-one he wanted to solve.“They say, ‘I have this problem. To counteract her alloimmune state, her doctors had given her corticosteroids, which caused her face to swell and hair to grow abnormally on her body. To make matters worse, her immune system had started to reject the transfusions and had created antibodies against the foreign blood. Her doctors had been giving her monthly blood transfusions to treat her severe chronic anemia, but the treatment wasn’t working. Her hemoglobin levels were one-fourth of normal. ![]() Her family had brought her to Bangkok, Thailand, from a neighboring country in Southeast Asia. Several years ago, a girl came to see pediatric hematologist Vip Viprakasit, M.D. ![]()
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