Sickle Cell Disease Fasting Outcomes

After obtaining approval from the institutional research board (IRB), we retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 145 adult Muslim patients diagnosed with sickle cell disease, living in Qatar, and following up with the hematology department in a tertiary care center. Fifty-two patients were confirmed to be fasting during part or all of Ramadan for any of the years 2019–2021; the research team confirmed the fasting status through a telephone script. The participants fulfilled the inclusion criteria of being 18 years or older, Muslim, and residing in Qatar. We excluded patients younger than 18 years, non-Muslim, sickle cell trait, pregnant ladies, patients with established chronic kidney disease, or patients who were confirmed to have an infection, conditions with fluid loss that can potentially lead to dehydration (e.g., severe diarrhea, vomiting, polyuria, etc.) or any other apparent precipitating factor for VOC during fasting.
The following outcome variables before (within 1 month of Ramadan), during, and post-Ramadan (till 1 month after) were obtained by screening the electronic medical records of the study participants:
Excel and SPSS program v 29 were used for data management and analysis. Mean (sd), median (IQR), and frequency (%) described the data. Inferential statistics were applied to determine the differences and associations between variables. One-way with repeated measures ANOVA with a Greenhouse-Geisser correction and Friedman tests (^*) were used to measure the difference over time. A priori significance level was set at 0.05.