Serum vitamin E and the sickling status in children with sickle cell anaemia.

Serum vitamin E levels were determined on 62 children with sickle cell anaemia and 35 age-matched controls. Among the sicklers, the irreversibly sickled cell counts were done and correlated with serum vitamin E levels. There was a significant difference in serum vitamin E values (P less than 0.001), the sickle cell anaemia patients showing a deficiency with 27% of them deficient as against 2.9% of controls. The vitamin E deficient sicklers were also found to have significantly higher irreversibly sickled counts (P less than 0.02), indicating that vitamin E is an important inhibitor of the irreversibly sickled cell formation.