Background: Multiparameter flow cytometry is the most important method for the lineage assignment and maturational analysis of acute leukemias (AL) cells. The multi parametric immunophenotyping analysis allows the detection of aberrant antigen expression and the analysis of heterogeneity and clonality of malignant cells in AL. The aim of the work is to study the immunophenotypes of blasts from patients with AL and determine the frequency of aberrant markers. Subjects and Methods: Retrospective study to analyze immunophenotypic data of de novo 144 AL patients who were diagnosed in Clinical Pathology Department, Sohag University. Results: We found that 61.8% of AL patients were classified as acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) while 38.9% classified as acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The commonest FAB subtype in AML group was AML-M2 (31.8%) followed by M4-M5 27.3%. As regard ALL, there were 85.7% with B-ALL and 14.3% with T-ALL. The aberrancy expressions were found in 66 of AL cases (45.8%), CD7 was the most commonly expressed lymphoid antigen in AML (25%), CD13 was the most commonly expressed myeloid antigen in ALL (39.3%). Conclusion: The multi parametric immunophenotyping analysis of AL is sufficient for diagnosis and classification of leukemia. The frequencies of aberrant markers in AL were matched with many published data.

Background: The most common causes of microcytic hypochromic anemia are iron deficiency anemia (IDA) and the beta-thalassemia trait (β-TT). The aim of the work is to compare the validity of the various simple indices to differentiate between iron deficiency anemia and β-thalassemia trait. Subjects and methods: A total of 2000 individuals were screened, by complete blood picture, measurement of serum iron, serum ferritin and hemoglobin separation; 224 patients were detected as having hypochromia and microcytosis.Among them 166 cases were IDA and 58 cases were β-TT. We calculated 11 discrimination indices. The number of correctly identified cases were determined, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value and Youden's index (YI) of each discrimination index was calculated. Results: The percentage of correctly diagnosed patients is highest for Matos and Carvalho index (MCI) (95.5%) which is closely followed by Red cell distribution width index (RDWI) (93.7%). The third high index was Green and King (GKI) (91.9%). Sensitivity, specificity of MCI for detection of IDA was found 98.8%, 87.9% respectively. For β-TT, sensitivity and specificity was found 86.2% and 98.8% respectively. The YI of MCI was found 85.9%. It is followed by RDWI; its sensitivity and specificity for detection of IDA was found 97.6%, 85.3%. For β-TT, sensitivity and specificity was found 82.7% and 97.6% respectively. The YI of RDWI was 81.6%. Conclusion: Matos and Carvalho index and RDWI are easily available automated cell-count-based indices coming out as good discriminator between IDA and β-TT in our study.