Effects Of Sickle Cell Anemia example essay topic

Sickle Cell Anemia I did research on Sickle Cell Anemia; it affects about 72,000 Americans in the United States. Sickle cell anemia is an inherited disease in which the body is unable to produce normal hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein. Abnormal hemoglobin can morph cells that can become lodged in narrow blood vessels, blocking oxygen from reaching organs and tissues. The effects of sickle cell anemia are bouts of extreme pain, infectious, fever, jaundice, stroke, slow growth, and organ failure. Tissue that does not receive a normal blood flow eventually becomes damaged. This is what causes the complications of sickle cell disease.

There are several types of sickle cell disease. The most common are: Sickle Cell Anemia (SS), Sickle-Hemoglobin C Disease (SC) Sickle Beta-Plus Thalassemia and Sickle Beta-Zero Thalassemia. (web) There are certain treatments that experts are trying to create. Doctors at Emory University in Atlanta credited an experimental stem cell transplant that for the first time is not from a related donor. This transplant cured the inherited disease from Ke one Penn who is 13 years old from Georgia. He suffered a stroke at age five years, and had a fever of 106 degrees. What the doctors did was replaced the boy's bone marrow with stem cells taken from the umbilical cord blood of an infant not related to him. (web) Dr. Ruby Bellevue of New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn has a patient that he wants to do the transplant procedure on, but he is waiting for more studies to come out to see what the long-term effects are.

Some effects could be rejection, complications, and / or death. For many years, doctors could only treat the sickle cell disease with blood transfusions and antibiotics, until now. Everyday doctors around the world are coming up with solutions to this debilitating disease. My suggestion for dealing with this problem is to go to the doctor to get an examination. If you play any sports or take part in any strenuous actives and experience any difficulty breathing or feel dizzy do not ignore it, go to the doctors and find out if there is anything wrong. It is better to find out the problem first before you will experiment a stroke or high fever that can cause death.

In the United States, Sickle-Cell Anemia is found mostly in African Americans. About 1 in 400 African Americans in the United States have the disorder. People with sickle cell trait are generally healthy. Sickle cell conditions are inherited from parents in much the same way as blood type, hair color and texture, eye color and other physical attributes are created. The types of hemoglobin a person makes in the red blood cells depend upon what hemoglobin genes the person inherits from his or her parents. Like most genes, hemoglobin genes are inherited in two sets... one from each parent. (web) This disease is deadly, and has killed millions of people, however this will change.

Sickle-Cell Anemia is a problem that will be solved in the future. In the past 10 years there have been enormous advances in research of this deadly problem and a cure is right around the corner..