Two-hundred and sixty-five patients with asymptomatic proteinuria and/or haematuria were studied at the Department of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Department of Nephrology, General Hospital Kuala Lumpur. They represented 25.4% of all the renal biopsies performed during the period 1980-88. All the three races were affected with 71.3% occurring between the ages of 20-39 years and 41.1% were detected during routine medical examination. Excluding those patients with lupus nephritis, IgA nephropathy was the commonest histological diagnosis (51.7%). The presence of severe and advanced histological changes in a significant number of biopsies emphasises the need for more effective screening and early referral of this group of patients.
A 26-year-old Chinese-Malaysian female patient with beta-thalassemia is presented. The main hematological values found in this patient were as follows: 1) normocytic hypochromic anemia (RBC 444 x 10(4)/microliters, Hb 11.8 g/dl) with marked anisopoikilocytosis, 2) erythroid hyperplasia, and 3) increased HbF (HbA 41.4%, HbA2 2.9%, HbF 48.9%). DNA obtained from peripheral leukocytes was analyzed using dot blot hybridization of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-amplified DNA with allele-specific oligonucleotide probes. A C----T substitution at position 654 of the second intervening sequence (IVS-2) was detected in her beta-globin clone.