Infection with Parvovirus-like Virus and Aplastic Crisis in Chronic Hemolytic Anemia

with aplastic crisis. Six of these patients had sickle cell anemia, the seventh patient had beta thalassemia intermedia. Virologic studies showed that six patients had acute infection with the human parvovirus-like virus; in the remaining patient the lack of appropriate specimens precluded viral diagnosis. We describe the features of the virus infection and accompanying erythroid aplasia, and discuss the role of parvovirus-like virus as the etiologic agent in the arrest of erythrocyte production. TRANSIENT ARREST of erythropoiesis with rapidly wors-ening anemia is well described in patients with chronic hemolytic disease including sickle cell anemia and heredi-tary spherocytosis (1, 2). In most of these patients, no etiologic agent can be identified but a viral cause of dis-ease has been presumed based on clinical features and the occurrence of family outbreaks in affected siblings. Re-cent reports on patients in England and the West Indies have suggested that infection with a parvovirus-like virus may be the principal cause of aplastic crisis in sickle cell anemia (3, 4). To date there have been no similar studies in North America and all previous cases of infection with parvovirus-like virus have been in children. We report the cases of six adults with sickle cell anemia and a pa-tient with thalassemia intermedia who developed an aplastic crisis in association with infection with a parvo-virus-like virus over a 2-year period