PNH highlights at ESCCA 2011

The growing awareness about the progressive and life threatening disease, PNH, was certainly apparent at this year’s 11th Euroconference on Clinical Cell Analysis. Indeed, the majority of registered participants who responded to a pre-event survey felt that demand for PNH testing was increasing, and this interest was reflected in the fully-booked 1 ½ day PNH course, chaired by Prof. Claude Lambert.

The PNH course boasted an expert faculty, including authors of the ICCS PNH Guidelines1 (M. Borowitz, A. Illingworth and R. Sutherland) and other well-known leaders in the field (B. Drénou, A. Orfao, L. Whitby and L. Del Vecchio), who shared their clinical and technical advice for correct PNH diagnosis.

Scientific presentations at the congress reported key advances in the field of PNH testing. Dr. Richard Kelly reviewed PNH disease aetiology and development from a clinical perspective, and two presentations reported investigations into the incidence rate of PNH in high-risk patient groups that warrant testing2,3. The need to identify and monitor patients with a small clone size was demonstrated by Dr. Movalia from Dahl-Chase Diagnostic Services, who showed how clone size varied over time4. Results from a study conducted by the United Kingdom National External Quality Assessment Service (UKNEQAS) showed that there was a large variability in the methods and reagents used for PNH testing, and a significant reduction in false negatives was achieved by implementing a standardised protocol using FLAER as a detection reagent5. Dr. Preijers and colleagues corroborated this result with data showing the positive impact of education on the quality of diagnosis in the Netherlands and Belgium6. The Alexion-sponsored industry symposium “PNH testing: the experience of Gulf countries” was presented by Dr. Tarek Owaidah, Consultant Haematologist at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital, Saudi Arabia.

References:

1. Borowitz MJ et al. Cytometry B Clin Cytom 2010;78:211-30.

2. Perez-Andres M et al. ESCCA 7th European Course on Clinical Cytometry 2011; Abstract POS-IM-14

3. Keeney M et al. ESCCA 7th European Course on Clinical Cytometry 2011; Abstract PAR-1-04.

4. Movalia M and Illingworth A. ESCCA 7th European Course on Clinical Cytometry 2011; Abstract PAR-1-05.

5. Whitby L et al. ESCCA 7th European Course on Clinical Cytometry 2011; Abstract POS-IM-04f.

6. Preijers F et al. ESCCA 7th European Course on Clinical Cytometry 2011; Abstract POS-IM-12