[Determination of the diagnostic value of erythrocyte discrimination indices (Mentzer and Srivastava) and of glycerol lysis time (GLT 50) in microcytosis].

Many authors proposed erythrocytes discriminating functions to differentiate most common microcythemic hypochromic anemias (beta-thalassemia and iron deficiency). This study considers two of these discriminating functions: 1. Mentzer's index; 2. Srivastava's index; and also test GLT50 proposed by Authors with the same aim. The purpose is to quantify the percent of false positive and false negative results of such tests. As standard the test of measurement HbA2 and HbF was used to classify thalassemic patients. The results prove that the Mentzer test is the best while, not highly specific (20% false positive), but we did not find any false negatives in our study. Srivastava's method for the presence of false negatives (7% of thalassemic patients) is less reliable, and even less so the GLT50 test (30% of thalassemic patients).