Anaemia is a surprisingly common condition. While on the extreme end up to 25 percent of people can be anaemic more common figures are much, much lower. Although lower in prevalence even for those people anaemia is a problem.

Anaemia is a problem for rather obvious reasons. Anaemia is diagnosed by a low red blood cell count. Red blood cells carry oxygen around your body. Without these cells you become hypoxic or in simpler terms tissues don’t get enough oxygen. On an intermittent basis this is not good but over the long term it can cause tissue damage and death.

How much of a problem for each person will vary. For some it is just fatigue or lethargy. For others it is life threatening for either them or in some cases their fetus.

What makes anaemia both good and bad is how insignificant a condition it can be. Something easily dismissed as just being tired. That makes diagnosis very difficulty unless your blood is tested,.

By contrast the diagnosis is very easy. A simple blood test and you can quickly and with little pain know if it is anaemia.

The diagnosis beyond just anaemia is far more complicated. That is because many conditions can all cause the end result of low or poor red blood cell, erythrocyte, count.

There are 2 approaches to the cause of anaemia and therefore eventually treatment. Intrinsic and extrinsic. As the names suggest causes from inside and outside the body respectfully.

The first of the intrinsic pathways to not are leukaemia or bone marrow cancers. These prevent red blood cells being made in the bone marrow as the progenitors are squeezed out. This leaves no room for new red blood cells to be made. The process is slow and takes a long time so it goes unnoticed until things are rather progressed.

More common is a simple matter od insufficient iron intake from your diet. Most times this is from an unbalanced or poorly planned diet such as becoming vegan or vegetarian with out a good idea of replacements.

Forgoing red meat is the general cause. A second possible mechanism is insufficient B vitamin intake. When iron intake is adequate but B vitamins are not you will still not have the proper red blood cell levels.

Another means and on the reasons up to 25 percent of parts of Africa have anaemia is malaria. Malaria causes the premature loss of red blood cells. That means that although the body tries to keep the red blood cell count up the body also uses the immune system to destroy the red blood cells. It it is a Sisyphean task unless and until the malaria is treated.

The irony is another related problem reduces the effect of malaria. That is sickle cell anaemia. While sickle shaped red blood cells are less liable to be parasitised by malaria they are also more likely to aggravate the immune system. This also leads to premature destruction of red blood cells.

Treatment is where things become complicated. Not just because of the many different causes of anaemia. The problem is that treatment is arguable as if not more diverse. Sometime sit ids simply increased dietary iron intake. Other times it is supplemental iron. In other case sit is very invasive and difficult procedures.

Relevant links:

Anaemia of Prematurity: Pathophysiology & Treatment
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2981681/