What Is Sickle Cell Anemia and How Do You Get It?
This complicated blood disorder affects people from many backgrounds and walks of life, famously including 1 in 400 African-Americans. But how did we discover it in the first place? What...
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Imagine for a minute that your blood cells are shaped like sickles -- sorta like that thing that the image of death carries? Ouch right? But what exactly causes our friendly little red blood cells to turn against us? Sickle Cell Anemia is a blood disorder, where instead of supple soft-frisbee red blood cells that live for 120 days, your body forms stiff pointy sickle-shaped cells that only live for 10 to 20 days. RBCs need to be soft and pliable to squeeze through your blood vessels safely and efficiently, so when they’re pointy they can get stuck in vessels. When this happens in the chest, abdomen or joints it can cause pain, if they get stuck in the hands or feet you can get swelling, and of course if they get stuck in organs they can cause infections or ...
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Imagine for a minute that your blood cells are shaped like sickles -- sorta like that thing that the image of death carries? Ouch right? But what exactly causes our friendly little red blood cells to turn against us? Sickle Cell Anemia is a blood disorder, where instead of supple soft-frisbee red blood cells that live for 120 days, your body forms stiff pointy sickle-shaped cells that only live for 10 to 20 days. RBCs need to be soft and pliable to squeeze through your blood vessels safely and efficiently, so when they’re pointy they can get stuck in vessels. When this happens in the chest, abdomen or joints it can cause pain, if they get stuck in the hands or feet you can get swelling, and of course if they get stuck in organs they can cause infections or ...
