Hemoglobin, Ferritin levels and RBC Indices among children entering school and study of their correlation with one another

Objective: To study correlation of various complete blood count variables with one another and to ascertain the values of intercept and slope among those having strong correlation. Methods: The cross-sectional study was conducted in Marach 2017 in the Rabwah town of Punjab province in Pakistan, and comprised randomly selected one in four children studying under the Nazrat Taleem School System. Serum sample from each subject was used to analyse complete blood count on an automated analyser, and ferritin levels were checked by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. SPSS20 was used for data analysis. Results: There were 299 children with a median age of 67 months. Mean haemoglobin level was 12.09 +/- 0.82gm/dl. There was a very strong positive correlation between haemoglobin and haematocrit; mean corpuscular volume; and red cell distribution width; mean corpuscular volume and mean corpuscular haemoglobin; red cell distribution width and mean corpuscular haemoglobin (p<0.001). Moderate positive correlation was found between haemoglobin and red blood cell count; haematocrit and red blood cell count; mean corpuscular haemoglobin and mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration (p<0.05). Moderate negative correlation was present between red blood cell count and mean corpuscular volume; red blood cell count and red cell distribution width; red blood cell count and mean corpuscular haemoglobin (p<0.05). Conclusions: There were strong to moderate correlation between various complete blood count variables in the studied population. Ferritin level was the only variable which did not have any correlation with any of the other variables.