Sickle Cell Anemia

Sickle Cell Anemia

The critical problem of sickle cell anemia is that it affects about 72,000 Americans in the United States with the greatest number of suffers being African American. Sickle cell anemia is an inherited disease in which the body is unable to produce healthy normal hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein to which oxygen molecules can attach. Under normal circumstances, your red blood cells are flexible and round, and they move easily through your blood vessels to carry oxygen to all parts of your body. In people with sickle cell anemia, the red blood cells become rigid and sticky and are shaped like sickles or crescent moons. In sickle cell these hemoglobin can morph cells that can become lodged in narrow blood vessels, blocking oxygen from reaching organs and tissues. The common effects of sickle cell anemia are bouts of extreme pain, vision problems, prone to sickness, fever, jaundice, stroke, slow growth, organ, and may lead to death. In infants, it only takes about 6 months after birth for symptoms of Sickle-Cell Anemia to appear. These symptoms include the following: swelling of hands and feet; and enlargement of heart and abdomen. Sexual maturation may be delayed in the adolescence stage of life and later in life; leg ulcers and infections can occur due to blood flow disturbance caused by the disease.

Sickle cell anemia is caused by a mistake in the gene that tells your body to make hemoglobin the red, iron-rich compound that gives blood its red color. Hemoglobin is a component of every red blood cell in your body. It allows red blood cells to carry oxygen from your lungs to all parts of your body, and to carry carbon dioxide waste from other parts of your body to your lungs so that it can be exhaled. Under normal circumstances, your body makes healthy hemoglobin known as hemoglobin A. People with sickle cell anemia make hemoglobin S which stands for sickle. The sickle cell gene is passed from generation to generation in a pattern of inheritance called autosomal recessive inheritance. This means that both the mother and the father must pass on the defective form of the gene for a child to be affected. Most often, sickle cell disease is passed down the family tree by parents who have sickle cell trait.

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