Today i received a hemoglobin electrophoresis report. Patient was suspected to have Hb E trait / disease. Report: HbA 94.4%, HbE 3.2%, HbA2 is 2.4%. At the end comment says- "there is an abnormal band of HbE zone found ,but not amounting to E trait. Advise repeat test 6 months later."
The patient (female, 34 year) has long history of anemia and blood transfusion. Recently received 2 units. The patient belongs to a community from south east Asia where Hb E is highly prevalent.
So what is the current status of the patient?
Dear haemoglobin E is not a normal haemoglobin and the concentration in your report is high. The test has to be repeated with correct medium for best electrophoresis may be after 6 months ensuring there is no contamination of the sample.
What type of electrophoresis is that ? Percentage, to the best of my knowledge, can only be reported using HPLC.
Emmanuel Ifeanyi Obeagu One may report whether a subject/ an individual is a carrier (trait) or not going by quantification, subject to country or region. What is taken in a race may be different from other places. But I think the methodology is what is unclear, perhaps wrong.
This is no HbE trait. It is either another variant moving like HbE in this method or an artefact or the patient has been transfused with HbE containing blood.
Please refer to http://globin.cse.psu.edu/ for more information - very helpful resource.
To get a clearer picture, you might first do HPLC. If things are still unclear, ask some research professionals to explore variants using mass spectrometry.
You can read this article for more information about hemoglobin variants that cause false interpretations of results:
Article Interference of hemoglobin variants in HbA1c quantification
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