confused about warm/cold antibody anemia

[TooterIA]

I have read a textbook and searched the internet. I get that they are called that because there are temps that cause the cell changes. But is the body temp fluctuating that causes these changes prior to the hemolytic anemia kicking in? Or why would the cell temps change?

Thanks

Jessica

[cschoppe]

Jessica,

My son was diagnosed at 4 months with warm antibody hemolytic anemia and from what I understood, it was whenever his own body temp reached a certain level, then that would trigger the antibiodies to start attacking his own RBCs...for a while there they thought he had cold agglutinin b/c whenever they did a blood draw, his blood sample would clot up like jello in an instant...it turns out that he just had so much antibody action in his blood stream that it would clot up anything in an instant...(when we almost lost him his hgb was

Hope that helps