A comparison of TAFRO syndrome between Japanese and non-Japanese cases: a case report and literature review

We report the case of a 25-year-old Caucasian male with diagnosis of TAFRO syndrome and present a literature review. The objective of the study was to compare TAFRO syndrome between Japanese and non-Japanese pa tients. Cases were included by searching the term “TAFRO” in the Medline database using PubMed between 2010 and 2016. The Studentt test and Mann-WhitneyU test were used to compare continuous variables. Fisher ’s exact test was used for categorical variables. Statistical significance was set atp <  0.05. Forty-four cases were included. Thirty-two patients (73%) were of Japanese origin. Japanese patients were significantly older than non-Japanese ones (52.0 ± 13.6 years versus 36.9 ± 19.8 years,p = 0.0064) but there was no difference in gender. Creatinine level on admission was significantly higher in the non-Japanese group (1.87 ± 0.84 mg/dL versus 1.32 ± 0.57 mg/dL,p = 0.0347). There were no significant differences concerning lymphadenopathy, elevated number of megakaryocytes on bone marrow aspiration, autoimmune abnormalities, and the following parameters on admission: platelet count, hemoglobin, albumin, alkaline phosphatase (ALP). Corticotherapy was always used on induction for Japanese patients while it was only used in 75% of the cases on induction in non-Japanese patients (p = 0.0166). Our study was the first to compare TAFRO syndrome according to ethnicity. Japanese patients were significantly older and had a significantly lower ...
Source: Annals of Hematology - Category: Hematology Source Type: research