Indepth study on sickle cell disease and its pathophysiology

Sickle cell disease is a disease known to exist long time ago. I can say that sickle cell is an ignorance disease. Reason being that most people are unaware of what this disease is and how it can lead to health issue in children.

Today even though most people have been sensitized about what this disease is, some are still making the mistake of not running a laboratory test before marriage.

Well, in this article I will be detailing more on what you actually need to know about sickle cell disease, how this disease could cause a lot of side effect and a way of handling it.

Sickle cell disease can be defined as an inherited disorder which affects the shape of the red blood cells and therefore prevent the rate at which oxygen is being carried throughout the body.

This disease has known to have claimed a lot of life in our generation.

As of 2015, about 4.4 million people have sickle cell disease, while an additional 43 million have sickle cell trait.[7][10] About 80% of sickle cell disease cases are believed to occur in Sub-Saharan Africa.[11] It also occurs to a lesser degree in parts of India, Southern Europe, West Asia, North Africa and among people of African origin (sub-Saharan) living in other parts of the world.[12] In 2015, it resulted in about 114,800 deaths

Even at the rate of death of sickle cell disease, some persons are still falling the victim of becoming couple without a proper laboratory check up. If peradventure you happen to visit any children hospital, you will find out that some children constantly visits the hospital for blood transfusion.

Do you know that people who have this disease cannot be able to have normal flow of blood due to the sickle cell nature of the blood which prevents normal blood flow and therefore prevents the passage of oxygen from one part of the body to the other.

The pathophysiology of sickle cell anemia

Red blood cell itself is biconcave in shape and has an elastic property in them. The shape and the elasticity of the red blood cells makes it easier to pass through the capillaries and enable a steady flow of blood and oxygen.

In sickle cell disease, due to low oxygen tension the red blood cells loses its elasticity and becomes rigid and have a sickle shape.

This sickle shape fails to regain it's normal shape. This causes an increase in the death of the red blood cell which results to anemia.

Normally, the bone marrow is meant to produce blood whenever the red blood cell depreciates. But in the case of a sickle cell patient, the rate of hemolysis superceeds the the rate at which the bone marrow makes it blood. This turns out to cause anemia.

Sickle cell disease normally comes with various symptoms, some of this symptoms could actually lead to uncomfortability of the child and result to a severe pain.

Anaemia:

One of the ways which Anaemia can be detected is by checking of the persons blood percentage. People who suffers from sickle cell Anaemia always come down with decrease in the blood volume.
This is because in a normal person, the red blood cell dies in every 120days, but in a sickle cell patient the red cells dies within 10 to 20 days which makes it difficult for the bone marrow to replenish within that short period of time.

Episodes of pain

Pains is the major symptoms of knowing if someone is battling with sickle cell Anaemia or not. Like I said earlier, people who suffers from sickle cell disease have a rigid red blood cells which prevents blood passage to the vital organs, joints and abdomen.

When this happens, there is always a severe pains in this specific region showing that oxygen are not able to reach to this specific area.

Swelling of joints/ infection

Swelling of the joints is one of the symptoms which we can use to identify sickle cell disease. This is because blockage of the blood vessels prevents blood from passing across the joint vein therefore leading to severe pains

Diagnosis of sickle cell disease

Sickle cell disease can be diagnose by going for laboratory test. Using a genotype machine the blood sample is applied and genotype is then identified.

Conclusion

Going for genotype test is very essential for anyone who chooses to marry or have someone tomorrow.

This issue of sickle cell disease can actually reduce if we can put hands together to see that we are actually doing the necessary things we suppose to do before marriage. Abiding with this rule will actually help us in bringing down the rate of sickle cell disease in the world.