Symptoms of anemia

Abstract

Anemia is a frequent diagnosis in medicine. Anemia can be present as a disease by itself or can be the consequence of another disease. Anemia is particularly common in patients with cancer (Groopman and Itri 1999; Ludwig et al. 2004; Pirker et al. 2005). The incidence and severity of cancer—related anemia depend on cancer type, tumor stage, duration of the cancer, patient age, type as well as intensity of anticancer therapy, and on bone marrow reserve (Groopman and Itri 1999; Ludwig and Strasser 2001; Ludwig et al. 2004; Pirker et al. 2005). Cancer-related anemia can be caused by myelosuppressive chemotherapy and radiotherapy, tumor infiltration of the bone marrow, relative deficiency of erythropoietin, inappropriate response of the bone marrow, functional iron deficiency, nutritional deficiencies, bleeding, hemolysis, cytokines, anemia of chronic disease, and other factors (Cotran et al. 1999; Groopman and Itri 1999). The anemia of chronic disease is the most common type of non-treatment-induced anemia in patients with cancer (DeRienzo and Saleem 1990; Krantz 1994) and is caused by mainly an impaired marrow response to erythropoietin and partly also by a relative inadequacy of erythropoietin production (Dowlati 1997).