ABSTRACT:
Thalassemias and hemoglobinopathies are hereditary conditions found in humans throughout the world. In veterinary medicine, hemoglobin polymorphism has been studied in production animals, but there are no reports of hemoglobinopathies in dogs, and studies involving hemoglobin polymorphism in this species are scarce. In order to search for hemoglobin variants in dogs, blood samples were collected from 202 dogs of various breeds, being 130 patients with chronic anemia (Experimental Group) and 72 clinically healthy animals (Control Group). These samples were subjected to alkaline electrophoresis of hemoglobin, which permitted separation and quantification of hemoglobin fractions by densitometry, and then subjected to hemoglobin electrophoresis in an acid medium, a technique used in human medicine for the separation of variant fractions of hemoglobin that do not differentiate in an alkaline medium. The erythrogram and RBC indices were obtained concurrently. The methods demonstrated that HbA is the major component of canine hemoglobin, and a small amount of HbA2 can be detected in some of the evaluated animals, and most dogs showed only HbA in its composition. It was concluded that the presence or absence of HbA2 does not interfere with RBC indices of evaluated animals, and the comparison between the hemoglobin of Experimental and Control groups showed no differences in fractions distribution between them, and there was no hemoglobin variants in evaluated canines.
INDEX TERMS:
Hemoglobinopathies; electrophoresis; hemoglobin polymoprphism; dogs.
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