The form of iron oxide deposits in thalassemic tissues varies between different groups of patients:: a comparison between Thai β-thalassemia/hemoglobin E patients and Australian β-thalassemia patients

Mossbauer spectra of 12 beta-thalassemia/hemoglobin E spleen samples from Thai patients who had not received multiple blood transfusions and chelation therapy and seven beta-thalassemia spleen samples from Australian patients who had received multiple blood transfusions and chelation therapy were recorded with sample temperatures of 78 K. Each spectrum was found to consist of a superposition of a relatively intense central doubler characteristic of high-spin Fe(III), a low intensity sextet of peaks due to magnetic hyperfine-field splitting, and occasionally a doublet that could be attributed to heme iron. A significant (P = 0.01) difference (Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic of 0.71) between the distributions of sextet signal intensity as a fraction (F-s) of the total non-heme iron Mossbauer spectral signal for the two groups of patients was detected. The distribution of F-s for the Thai beta-thalassemia/hemoglobin E spleens had a mean value of 0.128 (S.D. 0.035) while that for the Australian beta-thalassemia spleens had a mean of 0.27 (S.D. 0.12). No significant difference between the distributions of nonheme iron concentrations in the tissues for the two groups of patients was detected by atomic absorption spectrometry. This study shows that the Australian beta-thalassemia patients had a higher fraction of their non-heme spleen iron in a goethite-like form than the Thai beta-thalassemia/Hb E patients. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.