Sickle cell anemia is commonly known as a "black disease." Though it is most frequently found in Africans and African Americans, it is also found in people from the Mediterranean region, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and India. Sickle cell anemia is a hereditary blood disorder that causes the bone marrow to produce red blood cells with defective hemoglobin (hemoglobin S). Hemoglobin is the oxygen-carrying substance in red blood cells. Normally, red blood cells are round; hemoglobin S causes red blood cells to become misshaped, or sickle-shaped, when they release oxygen to other tissues in the body. The abnormal form of the hemoglobin, Hb S, that is produced can bind oxygen just as well as the normal hemoglobin, but when the oxygen level is low, the Hb S molecules join to form stiff fibers. These fibers distort the shape of the red blood cells making them long and curved, thus labeling the disorder as sickle cell anemia.…
