Another sign is that children may show delayed growth and development. (Genetic Disease Profile: Sickle Cell Anemia)
One of the aspects that problematizes this disease are the complications that can arise as a result of the lowering of body defenses and the increased vulnerability to illness. This can be ascribed to spleen damage. The disease "....prevents the spleen from destroying bacteria in the blood. Infants and young children, especially, are susceptible to bacterial infections that can kill them in as little as 9 hours from onset of fever." (Genetic Disease Profile: Sickle Cell Anemia)
Stroke is anther serious possible consequence of this disease. This can result from defective cells damaging the walls of red blood vessels.
6. Brief historical overview.
While the HbS gene is usually found in Africa, yet there is very little evidence and reporting of this gene in African medical literature until the 1870s.
One reason given for this is that many of the symptoms of sickle cell anemia are similar to other diseases found on the continent. (Sickle Cell) Therefore most of the reports and published documentation about the disease are related to studies of patients in the United States.
One of the very first published medical papers on this disease was, "Case of Absence of the Spleen" in the Southern Journal of Medical Pharmacology, published in 1846 in America. (Sickle Cell)
However one of the first modern formal reports on the disease was published in Chicago 1910. This report was to establish the name of the disease. "In the western literature, the first description of sickle cell disease was by a Chicago physician, James B. Herrick, who noted in 1910 that a patient of his from the West Indies had an anemia characterized by unusual red cells that were "sickle shaped." (A Brief History of Sickle Cell Disease)
The following are some of the most significant events related to the historical study and research of sickle cell anemia.
Taliafero and Huck first recognized that the sickling phenomenon was an inherited condition in 1923. (Ingram 38)
In 1927, Hahn and Gillespie showed that sickling of the red cells was related to low oxygen. (A Brief History of Sickle Cell Disease)
In 1948, using a new technique known as protein electrophoresis, Linus Pauling and Harvey Itano showed that "...the hemoglobin from patients with sickle cell disease is different than that of normals. This made sickle cell disease the first disorder in which an abnormality in a protein was known to be at fault." (A Brief History of Sickle Cell Disease)
In 1949, Neel and Beet, independently, put forward the now accepted view that individuals with the severe sickle cell anemia were homozygous for an abnormal gene and that sickle-cell trait carriers were heterozygous, having one normal and one abnormal gene." (Ingram 38)
In 1956, sickle cell disease became the first genetic disorder whose molecular basis was known. This was achieved by Vernon Ingram and J.A. Hunt who "...sequenced sickle hemoglobin and showed that a glutamic acid at position 6 was replaced by a valine in sickle cell disease. Using the known information about amino acids and the codons that coded for them, they was able to predict the mutation in sickle cell disease. "(A Brief History of Sickle Cell Disease)
The first reported cure of sickle cell disease took place in 1984, when bone marrow transplantation in a child with sickle cell disease produced the first reported cure of the disease. "The transplantation was done to treat acute leukemia. The child's sickle cell disease was cured as a side-event. The procedure nonetheless set the precedence for later transplantation efforts directed specifically at sickle cell disease." (A Brief History of Sickle Cell Disease)
Another important breakthrough occurred in 1986 when a study found that "...young children with sickle cell anemia who took penicillin twice a day by mouth had much lower rates of S. pneumoniae infection than a similar group of children who received a placebo." (A Brief History of Sickle Cell Disease)
In 1987, a panel of experts recommended that "...all infants born in the United States be screened for sickle cell anemia so that children with the disease could be identified early and offered treatment with penicillin." (New Hope for People with Sickle Cell Anemia)
In 1995 a drug known as Hydroxyurea became the first and only drug that was successful in preventing various complications that could result from sickle cell disease. (A Brief History of Sickle Cell Disease)
7. Prognosis and treatment.
At present there is, except for bone marrow transplant, no known cure for sickle cell disease. However " Transplants are complicated procedures and aren't an option for everyone." (Sickle Cell Disease) Transplants often have extreme risk factors are also made problematic by donor matching and rejection issues. This is indicated in the following explanation...
Sickle cell anemia according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health - NLM/NIH (2013), "is a disease in which your body produces abnormally shaped red blood cells." As the NLM/NIH further point out, the cells produced in this case ordinarily have a crescent-like shape. The red blood cells of an individual usually have a disk-like shape. It is this disk like shape that enhances and eases their
Sickle Cell Anemia As an inherited condition, it is presence of hemoglobin which tends to be abnormal that brings about sickle cell anemia. In basic terms, hemoglobin is a red blood cell protein whose main function is carrying oxygen. It is this hemoglobin abnormality that informs 'sickled' or distorted red blood cells whose survival is compromised as a result of the distortion and fragility. Though the prevalence of the condition largely
The science behind the research was not incredibly profound, but again the article was fluidly written and very easy to follow the logic of. Reflection: This is not an aspect of the disease I had thought of before; it is important to remember that there are very human bodies that contain these sickle-shaped cells. The fact that this "treatment" focuses on the symptoms of the disease rather than the cause is
Anemia is defined as a condition in which the body does not have enough healthy red blood cells in order for oxygen to be carried to tissues (Mayo Clinic, 2010). Red blood cells are shaped like discs and resemble doughnuts without holes in the middle (National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, 2010). Red blood cells are manufactured in bone marrow, and their function is to carry oxygen throughout the body
III. Considering Current Challenges As noted during the introductory chapter of this proposal, children routinely note how their parents cope with pain; their particular pain coping styles. During the implementation of this proposed study, this researcher expects to create a questionnaire... exploring the way parents of adolescents afflicted with SCD personally handled their pain. Both parents and adolescents will be solicited to contribute to the following components will the condensed/adapted to
Unfortunately, a tremendous amount of valuable research has been put on hold ever since the ban of federal funding for stem cell research. In the United States, the vast majority of medical research of all types that eventually lead to cures for disease are funded by the federal government. The federal ban on stem cell research does not completely prohibit it, but the effect is nearly the same, just as
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