Sickle-cell anemia - so far an incurable blood disease

It is known that sickle cell anemia is a pathology in the blood that children inherit from their two parents. This disease is not infectious, it is impossible to catch it - you can only be born with it. Despite the fact that sickle cell anemia is not yet curable, one can still treat the symptoms in order to alleviate the suffering of the patient.

How common is sickle-cell anemia?

According to the research of scientists, this disease is mainly found in people of African descent. Therefore, the "capital" of sickle-cell anemia is in Nigeria, home to the largest black population, and the number of patients is about one million Nigerians, of whom nearly 60,000 die each year.

What is the root of the problem?

To understand this, imagine such an illustrative example. The country depends on imported food, which is necessary for people living in villages. Trucks are loaded with products and from the capital travel on the main highways to rural areas. The roads are narrowed.

While everything is going well the trucks unload the products and again return to the capital for another batch of food. But what happens if trucks break down? Food spoils and other trucks do not get because of the congestion on the roads. People remain hungry and suffer.

By the same principle, erythrocytes (red blood cells) carry oxygen, which serves as food for the body from the lungs along the arteries and then into all tissues of the body. Gradually, the capillaries ("roads") strongly narrow, so that red blood cells can only move one line one by one, trying to seep through the smallest blood vessels. Here they will leave their "load" of oxygen to supply cells.

A healthy full red blood cell has a round shape and easily passes through the diameter of a narrow blood vessel. But, if it is a patient who has sickle cell anemia, then his erythrocytes break down. They are no longer round, but are made like a sickle or a banana. For this reason, the corpuscle corpuscles are trapped in narrow places, like a truck that has fallen into the mud, and create traffic jams, preventing the movement of the remaining red blood cells.

No oxygen - no power to the cells. In those parts of the body where this occurs, the patient feels a fit of pain. The pain suddenly hits some organ, a person, especially if it's a child, screams and cries. Only after 2-3 days, maybe even a week, the pain subsides.

Symptoms of the disease

For the first time they appear around 6 months of the child's life. The first sign is painful and swollen brushes or legs to the ankles, or both that and another at once. The child cries, eats badly, sometimes the whites of the eyes turn yellow, the palms, tongue and lips of the baby look paler than usual. Requires a blood test.

Children who suffer from sickle-cell anemia live in constant fear of a possible attack. They are more vulnerable to infectious diseases than others, their joints are constantly sore, ulcers on the ankles may not heal for years. The usual cause of death is an infection.

There are cases when a sick child first experiences seizures only in adolescence.

Treatment and prevention of seizures

Sickle-cell anemia is a lifelong disease, it does not have any medicines yet.

But you can, using simple measures, reduce the number of seizures to a minimum:

• Lots of water that facilitates blood circulation in the vessels (an adult patient needs 3-4 liters a day) to prevent an attack.

• Painkillers to relieve pain.

• Balanced diet, multivitamins and folic acid.

• Be sure to be examined by a doctor and protect yourself from infections.

These measures help many suffering from this ailment to lead a perfectly normal happy life.