Clinical and Laboratory Correlates of QTc Duration in Adult and Pediatric Sickle Cell Disease

Sickle cell disease, a common genetic disorder in African Americans, manifests an increased risk of sudden death, the basis of which is incompletely understood. Prolongation of heart rate-corrected QT (QTc) interval on the electrocardiogram, a standard clinical measure of cardiac repolarization, may contribute to sudden death by predisposing to torsades de pointes ventricular tachycardia.

We established a cohort study of 293 adult and 121 pediatric sickle cell disease patients drawn from the same geographic region as the Jackson Heart Study (JHS) cohort, in which significant correlates of QT duration have been characterized and quantitatively modeled. Herein, we establish clinical and laboratory correlates of QTc duration in our cohort using stepwise multivariate linear regression analysis. We then compared our adult sickle cell disease data to effect-size predictions from the published JHS statistical model of QT interval duration.

In adult sickle cell disease, gender, diuretic use, QRS duration, serum ALT levels, anion gap, and diastolic blood pressure show positive correlation; hemoglobin levels show inverse correlation; in pediatric sickle cell disease, age, hemoglobin levels, and serum bicarbonate and creatinine levels show inverse correlation. The mean QTc in our adult sickle cell disease cohort is 7.8 milliseconds longer than in the JHS cohort, even though the JHS statistical model predicts that the mean QTc in our cohort should be > 11 milliseconds shorter than in the much older JHS cohort, a differential of > 18 milliseconds.

Sickle cell disease patients have substantial QTc prolongation relative to their age, driven by factors some overlapping, in adult and pediatric sickle cell disease, and distinct from those that have been defined in the general African American community.