Objectives
The study was carried out to with the aim to find out the frequency of G6PD deficiency among the patients attending the hospital and to rationalize methemoglobin reduction test (Qualitative method) in reference to the spectrophotometric assay (Quantitative method). Timely screening of the patients for Glucose 6 phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency with appropriate screening method can play an important role in preventing hemolytic crisis that arises from therapeutic use of oxidative drugs like primaquine.
Result
The frequency of Glucose 6 phosphate dehydrogenase deficient cases was 3% by both of the employed tests. The mean ± SD of Glucose 6 phosphate dehydrogenase activity in the patients under study was 15.34 ± 4.7 IU/l in males, 16.01 ± 3.74 IU/l in females. G6PD activity was positively associated with reticulocyte count (r = 0.289, p-value = 0.004) and negatively with mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (r = -0.220, p-value = 0.028). The correlation of Red blood corpuscular count and Glucose 6 phosphate dehydrogenase was statistically significant (p-value = 0.048).