Sickle Cell Disease
Sickle cell disease is caused by red blood cells in the wrong shape.
Healthy red blood cells are round and flexible.
But when someone has sickle cell disease, their red blood cells bend in the shape of a sickle.
- Sickle cells are hard and sticky. They clump together and get stuck in blood vessels.
- Sickle cells do not last as long as healthy red blood cells.
This is caused by a "spelling mistake" in your genes.
Genes are instructions for your cells. In sickle cell disease, you have a gene with the wrong instructions. This gene is why your body makes the sickle cells, not healthy red blood cells.
Genes come from your biological parents.
But when someone has sickle cell disease, their red blood cells bend in the shape of a sickle.
- You get half from your mother and half from your father.
- People with sickle cell disease have 2 copies of the gene with the wrong instructions.
- People with sickle cell trait have 1 copy of the gene with the wrong instructions. They do not have sickle cell disease.
Sickle cell disease can be cured in some people.
The cure can be from bone marrow transplant or from gene therapy.
- In a bone marrow transplant, you get donated blood-making stem cells that can make healthy red blood cells.
- In gene therapy, doctors change some genes in your blood-making stem cells so they start to make healthy red blood cells.
Many new treatments are being studied by doctors.
Your doctor can tell you more about what it means to get treatments that are in a medical research study.
Sickle cell disease causes health problems.
As a child grows older, different health problems related to sickle cell disease can happen. Here are some common complications and symptoms that can happen:
- Acute chest syndrome
- Anemia
- Aplastic crisis
- Bedwetting
- Gallstones
- High blood pressure
- Heart problems
- Infection
- Kidney disease
- Learning difficulties
- Leg ulcers
- Osteonecrosis
- Pain crisis
- Priapism (unwanted erection)
- Retinopathy
- Sepsis
- Shortened life expectancy
- Spleen enlargement
- Stroke
- Vision loss
- Vitamin D deficiency