Aplastic crisis and erythema infectiosum (fifth disease) revealing a hereditary spherocytosis in a familial human parvovirus infection.

We report two clinical observations on a father and son, who both presented an aplastic crisis at the same time during a human parvovirus (HPV) infection. This erythroblastopenia revealed hereditary spherocytosis in both patients. The son also had a clinical status of erythema infectiosum (fifth disease). This data shows that HPV may be responsible for these two different pathologies in the same person.