Clin Chem Lab Med 2015; 53(2): e25–e28
Letter to the Editor Rafael Alis*, Oscar Fuster, Leonor Rivera, Marco Romagnoli and Amparo Vaya
Influence of age and gender on red blood cell distribution width DOI 10.1515/cclm-2014-0756 Received July 22, 2014; accepted July 24, 2014; previously published online August 25, 2014
Keywords: aging; gender; red blood cell distribution width. To the Editor, We have read with interest the recently published article by Lippi et al. [1] in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine about red blood cell distribution width (RDW) and its association with age and gender. RDW is an inexpensive, easy to calculate parameter that reflects anisocytosis which, in recent years, has received growing attention [2]. High RDW has been found to be associated with multiple conditions, such as cardiovascular events [3, 4] or inflammatory diseases [5, 6]. In the paper by Lippi et al. [1], a strong dependence of RDW upon age and gender is shown in a large population (n = 1907) of actual and former healthy blood donors. The authors presented evidence of an important association of increasing RDW with aging. More interestingly, they reported that the proportion of subjects with RDW higher than 14.6% (considered as a biomarker of morbidity and mortality in general population [7]) increased from 6% in
Letter to the Editor Rafael Alis*, Oscar Fuster, Leonor Rivera, Marco Romagnoli and Amparo Vaya
Influence of age and gender on red blood cell distribution width DOI 10.1515/cclm-2014-0756 Received July 22, 2014; accepted July 24, 2014; previously published online August 25, 2014
Keywords: aging; gender; red blood cell distribution width. To the Editor, We have read with interest the recently published article by Lippi et al. [1] in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine about red blood cell distribution width (RDW) and its association with age and gender. RDW is an inexpensive, easy to calculate parameter that reflects anisocytosis which, in recent years, has received growing attention [2]. High RDW has been found to be associated with multiple conditions, such as cardiovascular events [3, 4] or inflammatory diseases [5, 6]. In the paper by Lippi et al. [1], a strong dependence of RDW upon age and gender is shown in a large population (n = 1907) of actual and former healthy blood donors. The authors presented evidence of an important association of increasing RDW with aging. More interestingly, they reported that the proportion of subjects with RDW higher than 14.6% (considered as a biomarker of morbidity and mortality in general population [7]) increased from 6% in
