The sickle-cell disease also known as sickle-cell anaemia is a hereditary blood disorder caused by an abnormality in the oxygen-carrying protein haemoglobin found in red blood cells. Sickle-Cell disease leads to a propensity for the cells to assume an abnormal, rigid, sickle-like shape under certain circumstances. This disease is associated with some acute and chronic health problems, such as severe infections, attacks of severe pain (sickle-cell crisis), stroke, and an increased risk of death.
Sickle-cell disease occurs when a person inherits two abnormal copies of the haemoglobin gene, one from each parent. Several subtypes exist, depending on the exact mutation in each haemoglobin gene. A person with a single abnormal copy does not experience symptoms but still have sickle-cell trait. Such people also referred to as carriers.
The complications of the sickle-cell disease prevented to a large extent with vaccination, preventive antibiotics, blood transfusion, and the drug hydroxyurea/hydroxycarbamide. A small proportion of patients also requires a transplant of bone marrow cells.
Sickle cell anemia facts
- Sickle cell anemia is an inherited disorder of the haemoglobin in the blood.
- It requires the inheritance of two sickle cell genes.
- Sickle cell trait, which is the inheritance of one sickle gene, almost never causes problems.
- Almost all of the significant signs of sickle cell anaemia results directly from the abnormally formed sickled red blood cells blocking the blood flow.
- The current treatment of sickle cell anaemia directed primarily toward managing the individual features of the illness as they occur.
What is Sickle Cell Trait?
Sickle Cell trait is an inherited condition. In this, both haemoglobin A and S produced in the red blood cells. In which A is more than S always. Sickle cell trait is not a type of sickle cell disease. People with sickle cell trait are healthy also.
Inheritance
Sickle cell conditions mainly inherited from parents. In the same way as texture and color of hair, blood type, the color of eye and other physical traits. The types of haemoglobin a person makes in the red blood cells depend upon what haemoglobin genes the person inherits from the parents. Like most genes, haemoglobin genes inherited in two sets one from each parent.