Retrospective investigation of the effect of Vitamin B12 deficiency on hemogram parameters

Vitamin B12 deficiency is a common health problem in the population. In this study, any hemogram parameter that can detect Vitamin B12 deficiency was investigated. A total of 121 patients, including 67 patients with vitamin B12 deficiency and 54 patients without vitamin B12 deficiency, were retrospectively investigated for vitamin B12 deficiency in Abant İzzet Baysal University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine. The findings were analyzed statistically. All non-hemogram laboratory parameters were found to have a similar distribution. Among the hemogram parameters, the following parameters were significantly different between the groups; plateletcrit (PCT) value from normally distributed values (p=0.017), platelet distribution width (PDW) value from non-normally distributed values (p=0.030), and PDW/platelet (PLT) ratio (p=0.037) from values calculated from hemogram parameters. In addition, haemoglobin (HGB) and mean corpuscular volume (MCV) values were found to be significantly correlated (p=0.0001). There was a significant difference in the presence of anaemia between the groups according to gender (p=0.0001). When evaluated separately, this significant difference persisted only in women (p=0.0001). ROC analysis results of PDW, PCT and PDW/PLT ratio values, which were significant in the comparisons, revealed that PDW predicted Vitamin B12 deficiency with the highest specificity (63.7%) and sensitivity (64.2%). Our results showed that not only HGB and MCV but also PCT, PDW and PDW/PLT parameters can be useful in detecting the Vitamin B12 deficiency-related processes.

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