Vol.5, No.8, 1261-1267 (2013) Health doi:10.4236/health.2013.58171 Hematology and blood serum chemistry reference intervals for children in Iganga district of Uganda Fred Kironde 1,2* , Musa Sekikubo 1 , Halima Naiwumbwe 1 , Fatuma Namusoke 1 , William Buwembo 1 , Steven Kiwuwa 1 , Brenda Oketch 3 , Ramadhani Noor 3 , Roma Chilengi 4 , Edison Mworozi 1 , Mark Kaddumukasa 1 1 Makerere University College of Health Sciences, Kampala, Uganda; * Corresponding Author: faskironde@gmail.com 2 Makerere University College of Natural Sciences, Kampala, Uganda 3 African Malaria Network Trust, Dar-es Salaam, Tanzania 4 Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ), Lusaka, Zambia Received 11 June 2013; revised 12 July 2013; accepted 31 July 2013 Copyright © 2013 Fred Kironde et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT In this study, normal ranges for hematology and serum biochemistry in children aged 1 to 5 years in Uganda were determined. By a cross-sec- tional study, 1168 children from Iganga, a pro- spective site for clinical trials in Uganda, were screened. From 1168 households, 460 children were selected for enrollment, while 600 (58%) were excluded because of either a history of fever in the previous 24 hours, presence of asex- ual malaria parasites in the peripheral blood or presence of fever. Accordingly, 460 children (39.4%) of median age = 3 years were enrolled in the baseline study. While the lower limits of hemoglobin, hematocrit levels, mean corpuscu- lar volume and platelet counts for the Ugandan children were found to be less than conventional reference values of Caucasisan children, the white blood cell count reference values were higher than the international intervals. On the other hand, the upper limits of the reference in- tervals for serum transaminases, bilirubin, cre- atinine, urea, total protein and albumin in sera of the Ugandan children were higher than the cor- responding values for a Caucasian pediatric population. This study showed that, if hematol- ogy test results of the Ugandan children were assessed against “imported” international refer- ence values, up to 44.6% of the study partici- pants would have been excluded from clinical trials or would have been reported as adverse events in such trials. The present study was not only the first report of serum biochemistry ref- erence ranges for children aged one to five years in Uganda but also one of very few such studies in Africa. Keywords: Normal; Intervals; Reference; Uganda; Children; Hematology; Serum; Biochemistry; Iganga 1. INTRODUCTION Complete blood count (CBC) [1] and serum biochem- istry test [2,3] are commonly used not only to assess overall health but also to diagnose and monitor disease as well as determine the effect and safety of interventions including treatment and vaccines. Increasingly, many cli- nical trials in Africa involve children and pregnant wo- men [4-6]. However, although considerable efforts have been expended into developing capacity in the conduct of clinical trials in many sites across Africa towards im- proved intervention against diseases [7,8], information on the normal hematologic and serum biochemical fea- tures of African children is scanty. By and large, the normal ranges of blood cell counts and serum biochemi- cal constituents currently used in Africa are derived from data collected from populations living in industrialized countries of North America and Europe. Many of these imported hematology and blood biochemistry values are available in textbooks or in the guidelines provided by manufacturers of laboratory test kits and equipment. Yet, such reference intervals for European populations are not identical to the normal values for populations in the dis- ease endemic trial sites [9]. For example, adult Africans have been reported to have lower levels of hemoglobin, red blood cells, platelets, neutrophils, eosinophils and monocyte counts compared with populations in the Wes- tern countries [10-13]. Similarly, hematology and im- munology tests of Eastern and Southern African adult Copyright © 2013 SciRes. Openly accessible at http://www.scirp.org/journal/health/