Aplastic anemia

Aplastic anemia, abbreviated as AA, is a group of disorders caused by chemical, physical, biological factors, and unknown causes that damage bone marrow hematopoietic stem cells and/or the hematopoietic microenvironment, leading to bone marrow hematopoietic failure, resulting in centripetal atrophy of red marrow and replacement by fatty marrow. Clinical manifestations include pancytopenia and the resulting anemia, bleeding, and infection. Aplastic anemia is generally divided into acute aplastic anemia and chronic aplastic anemia. Its characteristics are as follows: mainly due to pancytopenia, corresponding clinical symptoms appear, such as leukopenia making patients susceptible to infection, presenting with fever, etc.; erythrocytopenia commonly causing palpitations, fatigue, dizziness, etc.; thrombocytopenia manifesting as bleeding, and generally conventional anti-anemia drugs are ineffective. Although traditional Chinese medicine has no specific disease name for aplastic anemia, the clinical manifestations of AA often include dizziness, shortness of breath, mental fatigue, weakness, and a pallid complexion, a series of deficiency signs, belonging to the category of "consumptive disease" (xu lao) in traditional Chinese medicine. For a long time, in order to explore the etiology of aplastic anemia and formulate preventive measures, scholars both domestically and internationally have conducted extensive investigations and studies on its incidence rate and distribution, prevalence rate, mortality rate, and survival rate. Western scholars consider aplastic anemia an "elderly disease." Research data indicate that before age 60, the incidence in both males and females is relatively low; after age 60, the incidence in both sexes increases significantly. It is worth noting that with the formation of an aging population in China, there is a gradual increasing trend in elderly patients with aplastic anemia.