A Study of Blood Thiamine Levels in Infants with Pulmonary Hypertension

Abstract

Introduction: Pulmonary hypertension (PH) has been linked to significant morbidity and mortality for a long time in children. The causes of pulmonary hypertension have different mechanisms. Over the past few years there has been a rise in the incidence of acute pulmonary hypertension, more in the infant age group. Some studies have shown that this clinical presentation overlaps with that of infantile thiamine deficiency and that intravenous administration helps with rapid recovery. Through this study we wanted to correlate blood thiamine levels with pulmonary hypertension in infants.

Methods: This study was conducted among 30 infants admitted in JSS hospital, Mysuru over a period of 18 months. Among these, 15 were taken as cases with pulmonary hypertension, 15 as controls without pulmonary hypertension and thiamine status of all of them were estimated. Two milliliter of blood was sent in EDTA vacutainer for testing for thiamine pyrophosphate by LCMS method.

Results: The mean age of study population was 4.93 (+- 2.70) months, with male predominance of 80%. A significant correlation between thiamine levels and PH was found in this study, with a strong to moderate negative correlation by using Pearson correlation coefficient.

Conclusions: This study concludes that there is significant correlation between thiamine and pulmonary hypertension, and thiamine may be used as a variable in identification of acute pulmonary hypertension in infants.