Inheritance of the Bantu/Benin haplotype causes less severe hemolytic and oxidative stress in sickle cell anemia patients treated with hydroxycarbamide

Beta s-globin gene cluster haplotypes (βs-haplotypes) can modulate the response to hydroxycarbamide (hc) treatment in sickle cell anemia (sca) patients. in brazil, the most common haplotypes are bantu and benin, and both confer a poor prognosis for patients when untreated with hc. we evaluated oxidative and hemolytic biomarkers in 48 sca patients undergoing hc treatment separated in three subgroups: bantu/bantu, bantu/benin and benin/benin haplotype. on the basis of reduced haptoglobin (hp) levels, patients with bantu/bantu haplotypes had 3.0% higher hemolysis degree when compared with those with bantu/benin haplotypes (p=0.01). the benin/benin patients had 53.6% greater lipid peroxidation index than the bantu/bantu patients (p=0.01) because of evaluated thiobarbituric acid reactive species levels. the bantu/benin subgroup had intermediate levels of hemolytic and oxidative stress markers compared with the homozygous subgroups. through strict inclusion criteria adopted, as well as consolidated and well-described hemolytic and the oxidative parameters evaluated, we suggest a haplotype-interaction response to hc treatment mediated by a ‘balance’ between the genetic factors of each haplotype studied.