Muzaffer Aksoy has made great contributions to the development of this branch with his research and publications in the field of hematology.
Turkish hematologist. He especially defined a type of anemia caused by benzene and blood cancer and conducted research on abnormal hemoglobin types that he had detected for the first time.
He was born in Antalya. After his primary education, he went to Istanbul and graduated from Istanbul Erkek High School in 1934. Aksoy, who received a diploma from Istanbul Medical Faculty in 1940, worked as an internal medicine assistant at Şişli Children's Hospital for 1.5 years, starting in 1942, then at Vakıf Gureba Hospital where Prof E Frank and Prof Dr. Arif İsmet Çetingil worked. was promoted to assistant. After working as a military doctor for 1.5 years, he became an internal medicine specialist with his thesis named Waterhouse Friedrichsen in 1947. Appointed as a specialist physician at Mersin State Hospital in the same year, Aksoy went to the US Boston New England Center Hospital with Prof Dr. V Dameshek for a year and worked as a researcher in the Blood Research Laboratory. There he started his research, which formed the basis of his associate professorship thesis and aimed to produce anti-hemoglobin serum in experimental animals. While a medical journal published in Switzerland in 1956 included an article by Aksoy on this subject, the Blood Research Foundation in Washington supported him to conduct research on blood diseases. Aksoy's first important study in those years determined that sickle cell anemia (Hemoglobin-S), which is more common in blacks living in the USA and some African races, is found at a high rate in Mersin and its surrounding Turkmens (Yörüks). is to announce this phenomenon to the world medical literature.
Aksoy determined that sickle cell anemia, a hereditary blood disease, is seen with a frequency of 13-16% among Turkmen. Defining various abnormal hemoglobins in Turks and Turkmens and different types of thalassemia, which is also a hereditary type of anemia, Aksoy was invited to the Abnormal Hemoglobins Symposium organized by UNESCO in 1957. The papers of this meeting held in Istanbul were published in England two years later.
Aksoy, who received the TÜBİTAK award in 1969 for his contributions to medical science in the field of abnormal hemoglobins and pathogens of abnormal hemoglobins, presented 6 papers to the World Congress of Hematology in Munich in 1970. One of Aksoy's most important discoveries is "Hemoglobin Istanbul", which is an abnormal hemoglobin and was defined for the first time in the world as a result of a collaborative study.
Muzaffer Aksoy has made great contributions to the development of this branch with his research and publications in the field of hematology. It was first shown by Aksoy that abnormal hemoglobins, especially sickle cell hemoglobin, are an important problem in Turkey and cause some diseases. In addition, Aksoy, who detected the presence of many abnormal hemoglobins such as Hb-D, Hb-E, and Hb-N in Turks, also described for the first time "Hemoglobin Istanbul," which is unstable and causes a type of hemolytic jaundice. Again, Aksoy was the first to detect some thalassemia diseases that were unknown until that day, such as homozygous Hb-S-alpha thalassemia disease and sickle-cell Hb-E disease. It has been shown that thalassemia disease, which is a type of hereditary anemia such as abnormal hemoglobins and is known as the Mediterranean disease among the people, is common in Turkey. Thalassemia, also known as Cooley's disease, is a type of anemia with the destruction of red blood cells due to hemoglobin disorder and is seen especially in people living in Mediterranean countries. The hemoglobin disorder in this disease is different from sickle cell anemia. There are two types of thalassemia, which is due to a change in the gene that directs globin production in DNA, one heavy (thalassemia major) and the other mild (thalassemia minor).
Aksoy also proved that benzene or benzol causes many blood diseases in Turkey. In his research, especially among shoe workers, he determined that benzene in the composition of adhesives in solution causes a kind of severe anemia called aplastic anemia and determined that this chemical substance causes leukemia. Noting that Hodgkin's disease, which is a type of lymph node cancer, is also caused by benzol, Aksoy ensured that the first precautions were taken against benzene in Turkey and argued that the benzene level in workplaces should not exceed 1 ppm. Apart from these subjects, Aksoy also conducted research on iron deficiency problems, anemia caused by nutritional deficiency, folic acid and vitamin B deficiency, and bone changes caused by Wilson's disease.