World Bank assisted National Agricultural Research Project (NARP) - University of Port Harcourt
Abstract
In order to investigate the prevalence of anaemia and related
haematological disorders, fifty-seven Nigerian children with Burkitt's
Lymphoma, (BL) between the ages of 4-14 years were randomly selected
from the paediatric Ward, Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital,
Zaria and Kaduna. Twenty-eight age-matched children in apparent good
health were included as control subjects. Results show that BL patients
had significant (p<0.05) reduction in haemoglobin content compared
to control values. Differential white blood cell (WBC) counts were not
significantly different in the values for neutrophils and lymphocytes,
when compared with control values, but the eosinophil count was
significantly (p<0.05) different when compared with values obtained
from the control subjects. Evidence available from the data of this
investigation suggest that some Nigerian children with BL had mild to
moderate anaemia and higher eosinophilic response during the course of
BL pathogenesis. Thus, any plan to treat BL patients should recognize
these conditions