Aplastic anemia and COVID-19: how to break the vicious circuit?

Aplastic anemia (AA) is a type of anemia that is caused by an intrinsic defect of hematopoietic progenitors or an extrinsic immune mediated destruction of stem cells. Patients commonly presented with pancytopenia, particularly leukopenia that renders patient susceptible to various infections. COVID-19 is one of these infections that could be life threatening and highly contagious. Infection with COVID-19 is expected in a patient who developed fever, respiratory manifestations, leukopenia and lymphopenia together with history suggestive of exposure to infection. Furthermore COVID-19 was found associated with thrombocytopenia, agranulocytosis and monocytopenia in severe cases. Thus the relationship between COVID-19 infection and AA would be a vicious circle as both cause leukopenia and lymphopenia. This study aimed to break this circle, through proposing risk stratification of vulnerability to COVID-19 in AA patients who were admitted in our institution in the period from Mar. 2018 to Mar. 2020 followed by a strict preventive plan tailored for each risk group. 79% of AA patients were at high risk of acquiring COVID-19 infection if exposed. This group of patients have to be targeted with more aggressive preventive plan than normal healthy persons. In conclusion this study proposed next step in combating COVID-19 infection through mass survey of high risk people then application of specific precautions to them, perhaps they could be candidate for future vaccine or prophylactic treatment.