Background. Blood donor anemia is due to serum iron spoliation during blood donation.
Haemoglobin (Hb) decrease occurs late compared to iron deficiency (ID). Also, Hb level
seems to be bad parameter for early diagnosis of ID states in blood donor. Our study aimed to
describe the usefulness of Reticulocyte Hemoglobin equivalent (Ret-He) in the early diagnosis
of ID states. Material and methods. We conducted a cross-sectional study involving 125
blood donors. We evaluated performances of Ret-He to early diagnose ID states in comparison
to Hb, Mean corpuscular volume (MCV), Mean corpuscular haemoglobin (MCH) and Mean
corpuscular haemoglobin concentration (MCHC). Results. Anemia concerned 16.8% of study
population. ID anemia and ID without anemia occurred in 5.6% and 14.4% respectively. Ret-
He had moderate to strong correlation with Hb (r = 0.48), MCV (r = 0.81) and MCH (r = 0.82).
At a cut-point of 32 pg/cell, Ret-He had better diagnostic performances for decreased iron
stores (Se = 63.3%, Sp = 77.9% and AUC = 0.706; p = 0.001) and absent iron stores (Se =
76.5%, Sp = 75.0% and AUC = 0.757; p = 0.0006) compared to Hb, MCV, MHC and MCHC.
Conclusion. Our study shows that Ret-He could be a usefulness tool in anemia and ID
management among blood donors in low-income countries.