Sickle Cell Anemia Case Study

The first case of sickle cell disease started to come alive in 1904 when Walter Clement Noel discovered a sore on his ankle which became very painful. After treating the sore, he noticed that there was a scar left. After some time he attended a dental college in Illinois in an attempt to fulfill his dream of becoming a dentist but noticed that he was having trouble breathing. He then went to a doctor by the name of Ernest E. Irons. The doctor performed routine medical examinations and lab tests and after a series of tests, he came to the conclusion that Noel had a deficiency of red blood cells, a condition known as anemia. He also observed something unusual, instead of the red blood cells having the shape of a bi-concave disk; they were pear-shaped or elongated. The doctor had no clue that he

Verne R. Mason, who published a report on the disease naming it sickle cell anemia.

Sickle cell anemia is not caused by a germ. It is not contagious. Sickle cell anemia is genuinely hereditary, denoting it can be passed from parents to their children through their genes. Genes are chemicals that carry information determining a person’s traits such as curly brown hair, or facial structure etc. In sickle cell anemia, a vicissitude in a gene causes red blood cells to transmute their shape from soft round cells to curved stiff cells that look akin to sickles or crescents. A person with sickle cell anemia has a faulty gene. This gene controls the formation of hemoglobin. Red Blood cells contain a profoundly and immensely colossal number of hemoglobin molecules, the iron-containing molecules that carry