Abstract
3 patients with hereditary spherocytosis in a family developed aplastic crisis. All showed acute onsets of severe anemia and reticulocytopenia and prodromal symptoms including fever, abdominal pain and headache. Aplastic crisis had been associated with the epidemic of erythema infectiosum and the third patient was demonstrated seroconversion of anti-human parvovirus B19 antibody by countercurrent immunoelectrophoresis. The acute-phase sera of three patients inhibited the formation of colony forming units-erythroid (CFU-E) and burst forming units-erythroid (BFU-E)-derived colonies from other normal subjects. Our results indicate that human parvovirus B19 was an etiologic agent in an outbreak of aplastic crisis in patients with hereditary spherocytosis.
