Risk of Hematologic Events - Introduction
Bone marrow suppression, a potentially serious side effect associated with the use of many drugs, results from the inability of bone marrow to produce sufficient numbers of blood cells. This in turn can cause multiple blood dyscrasias, including neutropenia, leukopenia, pancytopenia, aplastic anemia, and thrombocytopenia. Because inflammatory diseases may themselves be associated with blood dyscrasias, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate drug-induced events from those that may be due to the disease itself.
In particular, the inflammatory diseases of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have been associated with various hematologic abnormalities. Anemia, Felty’s syndrome, and large granular lymphocyte expansion have been reported in patients with RA, while inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has been associated with anemia, thrombocytopenia, and thromboembolism. In contrast to the frequent hematologic manifestations associated with RA and IBD, a search of the published literature identified few studies that describe an association between hematologic abnormalities and the other inflammatory diseases of psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis (PsA), and anklyosing spondylitis (AS).
As the majority of the published literature has described the hematologic abnormalities associated with RA and IBD, the information in thefollowing sections focuses primarily on these two inflammatory diseases. Where available, information from the published literature pertaining to the hematologic manifestations of the other autoimmune diseases of psoriasis, PsA, and AS, is also included.
Content on this page was last reviewed on September 30, 2008.
Content on this page was last changed on March 26, 2009.
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