Sickle Cell Anemia In The African American Community

Sickle cell anemia is a hereditary disorder that mostly affects people of African ancestry, but also occurs in other ethnic groups, including people who are of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern descent. More than 70,000 Americans have sickle cell anemia. And about 2 million Americans - and one in 12 African Americans - have sickle cell trait (this means they carry one gene for the disease, but do not have the disease itself).

Sickle cell disease (SCD) occurs in 1 out of every 365 African American births compared to 1 out of 16,000 Hispanic-American births (1). SCD is a group of red blood cell disorders in which patients have a sickle or moon-shaped red blood cell due to an abnormal S hemoglobin. While sickle cell disease is relatively rare in American births, this is an alarming statistic among people of Sub-Saharan (west and central) African descent. An interesting fact is that SCD occurs more often among people from parts of the world where malaria is or was common, such as Sub-Saharan Africa (1). In addition, it is believed that people who carry the sickle cell trait are less likely to have

Hypothesis: African-American parents with the Sickle Cell Trait have the greatest risk of passing Sickle Cell Anemia to their offspring.

Sickle cell anemia is an anemia that is inherited and mostly affects people whose heritage can be traced back to places where malaria was prevalent. There are approximately 100,000 Americans that have the disease and many more with the trait. Several of my family members are afflicted by this medical condition that causes red blood cells to take on an irregular shape.

“In the United States, it's estimated that sickle cell anemia affects 70,000–100,000 people, mainly African Americans” (NHLBI, NIH, Who is at risk for sickle cell anemia). SCD is a disease that is a serious disorder in which the body can make normal blood cells and sickle shape cells. Sickle shape cells can block the blood flow in your vessels and cause pain or organ damage also put you in risk for infections. SCD has no cure available but there are many treatments out there to deal with the complications of it. From over years treatments did get better from way back in the day doctors have learned. Sickle cell disease has lack of attention and funding because it’s only affecting

The Quiet Soldier provides excellent examples of music therapy in practice with a patient that has sickle cell anemia. The patient tends to keep to himself and not tell how he feels inside. The therapist’s technique begins by interviewing the client with simple, broad questions to attempt to open him up to express how he feels. The therapist later changes discussion to talk about which instruments and how music distracts him from the pain he constantly feels. The technique is unique because of its simplicity in nature, that by asking questions such as, “what was the worst pain you have ever experienced?”.

Last semester in clinical, there was a patient with sickle cell anemia and he automatically sparked an interest in me. The patient was quite young and was in so much pain that he could not even bear to be touched by the nurse and reported a pain level of 8. Before my encounter with this patient, I did not know much about sickle cell anemia and decided to do some research on this disease. In my research, I learned that a majority of these patients go through acute pain episodes that occur chronically. After learning this and thinking about the young boy in the hospital, I wanted to discover more about how the pain in these patients are managed and controlled.

Sickle cell anemia (SCA) is an inherited disorder that produces sickle or crescent shape red blood cells. Thus, the mutated erythrocytes result in an inadequate supply of oxygen being transported throughout the body. Research shows that among those affected the most with the sickle cell gene are African Americans. In recent years, we have seen a decrease in mortality and morbidity rates as a result of new approaches to treating the disease. The more we understand the pathophysiology of sickle cell anemia, the more we learn about developing therapies for genetic disorders such as SCA. In this paper, we will briefly discuss what sickle cell anemia is and possible treatments for people with sickle cell anemia such as gene therapy and new drugs.

Approximately 100,000 people suffer from Sickle Cell Anemia everyday and about 2 million people have the Sickle Cell trait in the United States alone. Sickle cell disease is the most common inherited blood disorder in the United States, affecting 70,000 to 80,000 Americans (Pruthi 2018). The disease is estimated to occur in 1 in 500 African Americans and 1 in 1,000 to 1,400 Hispanic Americans (Pruthi 2018). Sickle cell anemia is an inherited form of anemia, a condition in which there aren't enough healthy red blood cells to carry adequate oxygen throughout your body normally, your red blood cells are flexible and round, moving easily through your blood vessels. In sickle cell anemia, the red blood cells become

Thousands of years ago, a genetic mutation occurred in people from the Mediterranean basin, India, Africa, and the Middle East. As the Malaria Epidemic attacked people of these countries, carriers of the defective hemoglobin gene survived. Carrying one defective gene means that a person has a sickle cell trait. Two parents with the trait will produce a child with sickle cell anemia. People of these countries migrated and spread to other areas. In the Western Hemisphere, where malaria is not much of a problem, having the abnormal hemoglobin gene has lost its advantage. Any child born from parents that each has the trait will be born with the disease.

It is interesting to know the relationship between race and body structure, skin color, other visible characteristics, enzymatic and genetic variations, susceptibility to diseases and nutritional preferences varies among certain racial groups (Giger, 2013). There are marked intra individual and inter individual inconsistency in SCD. Medical heterogeneity of the disease has been clarified by both genetic and environmental factors. Identified genetic causes adding to differences in clinical severity of the disease include the pattern of sickle cell inheritance. Other modulators of the disease include environmental factors such as access to optimal health care, ambient living conditions, and availability of finance. Proper training of healthcare

Scientist explained the difference between Sickle Cell Disease in Africa to Sickle Cell Disease in United States by showing how common this disease is in Africa than it is in the United States. Scientist believe that in Africa there is a fatal form of malaria that occurs in Africa. People who have homozygous for the normal allele for hemoglobin often die of malaria. But people who have sickle cell trait don’t come in contact with the fatal form of malaria. Then more heterozygous live then people with homozygous for the normal allele, and they pass it to their children and their children gets sickle cell disease. Sickle Cell disease is not that common in the United States because people with sickle cell disease often died in early childhood and thus, many people didn’t pass it on to their children. Instead most inheritance from the alleles is from a parent who is heterozygous for the allele to one or more of his children.

Sickle cell disease is a blood disorder in which red blood cells take on an abnormal shape. Sickle cell anemia is when the red blood cells hemolyze, or die. Sickle cell disease is inherited from generation to generation and is the most common in inherited blood disorders. An estimated 70,000-100,000 people in America are currently suffering from this disease, most of which are African Americans. One is diagnosed with sickle cell disease in early childhood generally around four months old when the signs and symptoms are presented. Because of its huge impact, the United States requires all newborns to be tested for this disease. [1] Sickle cell disease is known to affect, “approximately 1 in every 400-500 African American

Sickle -cell anemia is a very important subject to touch on in today’s time because many people honestly do not know what this is. Sickle -cell anemia is a severe hereditary form of anemia in which a mutated form of hemoglobin distorts the red blood cells into a crescent shape at low oxygen levels (SCDAA par .1). Also it is one of the most common diseases in the African American race. There are other races that this particular disease would show up in such as the Hispanics, and people of the South American descent. According to the American Society of Hematology there are a count for 70 ,000 to 100 ,000 African Americans suffering from this disease (American Society of Hematology par .1). Statistics also state that 1 in 12 African Americans even have the sickle cell trait (ASH par .4). By doing simple math, that means that over the course of a year, there are over 1 ,000 babies being born in the United States with that disease. I know if I was shocked by those numbers, there are others out there who would be shocked too. I believe there should be more awareness thrown out there about sickle cell anemia because, it takes 2 parents with the trait to bring a child into this world unknowingly with the full blown disease. Throughout many countries sickle -cell often times gets sucked under the radar, when it really should be front in center because of the severity of this disease. Sickle -cell does not go away in a few days with a little bit of rest or medication, like the

People with sickle-cell anemia have to take penicillin, get extra vaccines, and get many tests done. Like most people they need to also exercise every day, have a nourishing diet, and get enough sleep every night. Sickle-cell anemia is most common in African Americans, 1 out of 365 African American children are born with two mutated hemoglobin genes or sickle-cell anemia. Sickle-cell anemia is a negative mutation of the hemoglobin gene because it prevents the oxygen from the lungs to the places its needed through the