Background: It may not be easy to recognize vitamin B12 deficiency by both clinical and laboratory tests. In its deficiency, it may be asymptomatic or cause life-threatening symptoms such as severe myelopathy and pancytopenia. The first examination required for the diagnosis of vitamin B12 deficiency is usually the measurement of serum vitamin B12 level. Due to the limitations of serum vitamin B12 measurement in detecting vitamin B12 deficiency, methyl malonic acid, homocysteine, or both will be measured in patients with clinical findings consistent with deficiency.
Materials and Methods: Our study was planned prospectively as a casecontrol study. Forty-five (Female: 15, Male: 30) patients who had Vitamin B12 deficiency between May 2019 and August 2019, and 40 healthy (Female: 25, Male: 15) who had normal vitamin B12 levels for control purposes were included in the study (p: 0.019), with the permission of the volunteer, native thiol, total thiol, disulfide ((total thiol-native thiol)/2), implication (ischemia modified albumin), which were increased from serum, were studied.
Results: The Average ages were 14.2 ± 2.15 years in the group with VITB12 deficiency (min 10 max 18) and 14.8 ± 2.77 years in the group without VITB12 deficiency (min 10 max 18) respectively. While the mean hemoglobin, MCV, WBC, platelet, ferritin, folate levels, native thiol levels, Disulfide (total thiolnative thiol)/2 ratio, IMA (Ischemia Modified Albumin) levels were similiar in range; Vitamin B12 levels, homocysteine levels, MMA (Methyl Malonic Acid) levels were significantly different in both groups. There was no significant difference for Index 1 (disulfide/native thiol*100), Index 2 (disulfide/total thiol*100) and Index 3 (native thiol/total thiol*100) values in both groups.
Conclusion: Thiols are compounds that react with oxidants to form disulfide bonds. There are studies showing that thiol-disulfide homeostasis has changed in cases such as type-1 diabetes mellitus, myocardial infarction, atherosclerosis, idiopathic recurrent abortions, attention deficit, and hyperactivity disorder. In this study, vitamin B12 deficiency and serum thiol-disulfide correlation were evaluated for the first time in the literature.
