[Health] Sickle Cell Anameia

Health

Sickle Cell Anemia

Sickle Cell Anemia

Synopsis:

(01) Why in News?

(02) Sickle Cell Anemia

(03) Symptoms

(04) Stem cell therapy for this

(05) Factsheet

(01) Why in News?:

·        During Japan visit, Modi met Shinya Yamanaka  asked him to work on Sickle Cell Anemia.

·        Shinya Yamanaka has won Nobel Prize for Medicine (2012) (for the discovery that mature cells can be converted to stem cells), for his research in stem-cells.

(02) Sickle Cell Anemia:

·        Sickle Cell Anemia is a hereditary disease and stays for whole lifetime.

·        Prevalent among Indian tribals (Northern and North – Western)

·        Normal Red blood corpuscles(RBCs) have disk/donut shape

·        But in this disease, body produces sickle shaped Red Blood Cells (RBCs)

·        These RBCs have abnormal life cycle, oxygen carrying capacity etc.

  

(03) Symptoms:

Ø     Fever

Ø     Jaundice

Ø     Large spleen

Ø     Large liver

Ø     Hand foot syndrome

(04) Stem Cell Therapy and Anemia:

§        Sickle cell can be used by bone-marrow transplant.

§        New bone marrow will begin synthesizing health (donut) shaped RBC.

§        But this transplant is very costly and risky.

§        Yamanaka’s Noble winning research had created iPS cell- these cells behave like stem cells.

§        We can program iPS cells to create a mass of bone marrow.

§        Then, Transplant it into patient and his sickle cell anemia will be cured.

(05) Factsheet:

·        Also called as drepanocytes

·        Hereditary blood disorder

·        A person with a single abnormal copy does not experience symptoms and is said to have sickle cell trait

·        Almost 300,000 children are born with a form of sickle cell disease every year

·        Mostly in sub-Sarahan Africa but also in other countries such as the West Indies, South Asia and in people of African origin elsewhere in the world

·        The condition was first described in the medical literature by the American physician James B. Herrick in 1910

·        In the 1940s and 1950s contributions by Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling made it the first disease where the exact genetic and molecular defect was elucidated.

·        In India, Sickle-cell disease is common in many parts of India, where the prevalence has ranged from 9.4 to 22.2% in endemic areas.

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