Beta Thalassemia

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Beta Thalassemia: The Fatal Genetic Disease Wrecking Children’s and Adolescents’ Lives
Beta-thalassemia major (BT) is an astringent hemolytic anemia which has a single gene deformity. It has over 200 mutations; most of them are very uncommon, affecting approaching 20 different alleles in the chromosome. Approximately 3% of the world population carries this gene. As scary as the word look, beta thalassemia comes from the thalassa meaning sea and haima meaning blood. In layman terms, it is referred to as “Mediterranean” Anemia or “Cooley Anemia.” You may guess that the disease predominantly occur in the Middle Eastern Region or Southwestern Asia due to its common name, which is exactly right.
Beta thalassemia is a rare disease passed from a parent to children. There is a detailed mechanism for how this can occur. Basically once an offspring chromosome has a defect in both of its alleles that are a beta globin mutation; he or she is prone of suffering a severe form of beta thalassemia, which is referred to as beta thalassemia major. It would significantly affect how the child develops, thinks, and it is coupled with various ailments that may cause imbalances it the body system causing premature death at a very early age. According to the National Health of Rare Disease, an early symptom of this disease is a general feeling of ill health (malaise), weakness, pale complexion, upset stomach (dyspepsia), and heart palpitations. Affected infants may have a yellow appearance to their skin, eyes, and mucous membranes (jaundice); leg ulcers; an abnormally enlarged liver, hepatomegaly (April 2013, p 6). If the victim gets proper treatment, he or she might see their teenage years.
You may ask the question, why is it important to study this d...

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...if it is not dealt with accordingly. A common treatment for an individual especially in North Africa who suffers from this ailment microcytic anemia mostly eats certain herbs for the idea to increase the iron supply to the body, however, it doesn’t work for every individual due to the level of severity of beta thalassemia, further medical treatment is mostly done with specific medical prescriptions, to increase the level of iron, others to increase the absorption of iron to form a normal red blood cell.

Works Cited

Stefano R, The role of ineffective erythropoiesis in non-transfusion dependent thalassemia.
[Internet]. April 2012 [cited 2013 Nov 17]; 26(0 1):S12–S15. Available from: http://ehis.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uosc.edu/eds/detail?vid=3&sid=5567aaa2-a958-45d2-aa60e8b390862281%40sessionmgr11&hid=105&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=edselp&AN=S0268960X1270005X

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