A blood disorder

Sickle Cell Anemia

Ray Rega, Ryan Molter, Ryan Kosciolek

• A blood disorder that causes red blood cells to:

- Elongate-Clog arteries

• Blood cells are shaped like “Sickles,” or a crescent shape

What is it?

What is it?• Normal blood cells can survive up

to 120 days

• Sickled blood cells can only live 10 to 20 days, and the bone marrow can not make enough cells to keep up.

• Anemia is a disease where the person has a lower number of red blood cells than normal.

• Most common inherited blood disorder: 70,000 to 80,000 Americans

affected. 1 in 500 African Americans affected. 1 in 1000 Hispanic Americans

affected.

• Blood cells become stiff and sticky which causes unnecessary clotting.

• Pain in any organ or joint.

• More susceptible to other diseases.

• Clotting causes serious infection, organ damage, and strokes.

Symptoms

• Other symptoms include:– Shortness of breath

– Dizziness

– Headaches

– Coldness in the hands and feet

– Paler than normal skin or mucous membranes (the tissue that lines your nose, mouth, and other organs and body cavities)

– Jaundice (a yellowish color of the skin or whites of the eyes)

– Sometimes swelling of the hands and feet.

Symptoms

• No cure

• Some treatments can help, such as Blood and Marrow stem cell transplants

• Most people with this disease are living to their forties, fifties, and higher.

Treatments

• Sickle Cell Anemia is inherited

• Life long

• From birth

• Two genes for sickle Hemoglobin, one from each parent.

Genetics

• If one parent gives a gene for sickle Hemoglobin, and the other gives a normal gene, then…

• They have what is called Sickle Cell Trait

• This is not the same as Sickle Cell Anemia. It means that the person caries one trait of the disease.

• Sickle Cell Anemia is due to a mutation in the HBB gene, which causes the hemoglobin to become deformed.

• Is a recessive trait.

Genetics

Bibliography"Sickle Cell Anemia, What Is." National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. US

Department of Health and Human Services, Feb. 2011. Web. 01 June 2011.<http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/Sca/SCA_WhatIs.html>.

"Sickle Cell Disease - Genetics Home Reference." Genetics Home Reference - Your Guide to Understanding Genetic Conditions. National Library of Medicine, 30 May 2011. Web. 01 June 2011.

<http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/sickle-cell-disease>.