BETA THALASSEMIA MINOR PATIENTS: NOT TIRED, BUT DEPRESSED AND ANXIOUS

We aimed to investigate whether the severity of fatigue and the incidences of depression and anxiety of patients with beta thalassemia minor (BTm) are different than healthy individuals using Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) BTm patients who were followed in University of Health Sciences Istanbul Training and Research Hospital Hematology Clinic between 2016 and 2017, who had normal biochemical parameters, thyroid function tests and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels, and didn't use any medications, consume alcohol or tobacco, have any chronic diseases or sleep disturbances were included in the study. Healthy control subjects who were matched with age, sex, marital status, educational status and body mass index (BMI), were also included for comparison. Thirty-nine BTm patients and 25 healthy controls were included in the study. The BTm and the control groups were comparable in terms of gender, age, BMI, educational status and marital status (p= 0.368, 0.755, 0.851, 0.785, 0.709 respectively). Fatigue Severity Scale score was ≥4 in 23 (59.0%) BTm subjects and in 15 (60%) control subjects (p=1.0). HADS anxiety score was ≥10 in 20 (51.3%) BTm subjects and in 5 (20.0%) control subjects (p=0.018) and HADS depression score was ≥ 7 in 20 (51.3%) BTm subjects and 6 (24.0%) healthy control subjects (p=0.039) .There was no correlation of hemoglobin with FSS score (p=0.526, r= -0.105), HADS anxiety score (p=0.703, r= -0.063) or HADS depression score (p=0.718, r= -0.06) in BTm group. We found that both depression and anxiety were higher in BTm patients than healthy individuals, but this difference was not feasible for fatigue.