Sickle Cell Anemia

U.S. scientists have found a way to get mice with a form of sickle cell disease to make normal red blood cells, offering a potential new way to treat the blood disorder in people, they reported on Thursday.Adults with sickle cell disease make mutant, sickle-shaped forms of hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that is vital for carrying oxygen to the body's tissues.These deformed cells block small blood vessels, causing pain, strokes, organ dysfunction and premature death.But this problem occurs only after birth.During development, a fetus uses one gene to make a fetal form of hemoglobin, but switches to another after birth, and problems with this adult gene are what lead to sickle cell disease.A team led by Dr. Stuart Orkin of Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Boston, earlier had discovered that a protein called BCL11A is responsible for making the switch from fetal hemoglobin to adult hemoglobin.In the latest study, published ...

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