Anisocytosis Explained

Anisocytosis is a medical term meaning that a patient's red blood cells are of unequal size. This is commonly found in anemia and other blood conditions. False diagnostic flagging may be triggered on a complete blood count by an elevated WBC count, agglutinated RBCs, RBC fragments, giant platelets or platelet clumps. In addition, it is a characteristic feature of bovine blood.

The red cell distribution width (RDW) is a measurement of anisocytosis^[1] and is calculated as a coefficient of variation of the distribution of RBC volumes divided by the mean corpuscular volume (MCV).

Types

Anisocytosis is identified by RDW and is classified according to the size of RBC measured by MCV. According to this, it can be divided into

• Anisocytosis with microcytosis – Iron deficiency, sickle cell anemia
• Anisocytosis with macrocytosis – Folate or vitamin B₁₂ deficiency, autoimmune hemolytic anemia, cytotoxic chemotherapy, chronic liver disease, myelodysplastic syndrome

Increased RDW is seen in iron deficiency anemia and decreased or normal in thalassemia major (Cooley's anemia), thalassemia intermedia

• Anisocytosis with normal RBC size – Early iron, vit B12 or folate deficiency, dimorphic anemia, Sickle cell disease, chronic liver disease, myelodysplastic syndrome

Etymology

From Ancient Greek: an- without, or negative quality, iso- equal, cyt- cell, -osis condition.^[2]

See also

• Anisopoikilocytosis
• Poikilocytosis
• Red blood cell distribution width

Notes and References

1. Book: Barbara J. Bain. Barbara J. Bain. Blood cells: a practical guide. 10 November 2010. 2006. Wiley-Blackwell. 978-1-4051-4265-6. 66–.
2. Web site: Archived copy . 2018-05-19 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180820193730/http://cal.vet.upenn.edu/projects/histo/Etymology.pdf . 2018-08-20 . dead .