Association of familial pernicious anaemia and hereditary haemochromatosis

We report the case of a 54-year-old patient presenting with a typical pernicious anaemia. His mother was diagnosed with unquestionable pernicious anaemia 5 years previously. Serum ferritin was strongly increased (1,160 mu g/l, normal range 29-380), with a transferrin saturation of 95%. We found a homozygous C282Y mutation of the HFE gene in our patient, his mother being heterozygous. The son of our patient was compound C282Y/ H63D heterozygous without detectable pernicious anaemia. This seems to be the first report of an association between familial pernicious anaemia and hereditary haemochromatosis. The simultaneous occurrence of the 2 diseases in the same patient helps to delineate the relative contribution of each of them to iron metabolism and erythropoiesis: iron overload was only moderately increased and responded rapidly to phlebotomies, whereas haemochromatosis did not modify the cytologic presentation of pernicious anaemia. Copyright (c) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel.