What causes sickle cell anemia?

Answer 1

Basically, sickle cell anemia means that some of the red blood cells of the person with the disease are not the right shape, instead of being bowl shaped, they are half moon shaped. This means that they can't carry oxygen around the body as well as a person without the condition. As the sickle cells are not only the wrong shape, but also quite rigid, they can block the blood capillaries, so that tissues in the body become starved of oxygen (ischemic). The blockages can vary loads in severity/frequency etc, and they can end up causing a stroke or heart attack if blocking a blood vessel to the brain or heart. One of the organs that is really badly affected by this is the spleen. It has really narrow blood vessels leading to it, so can get starved of oxygen badly and frequently. Normally this means that people with sickle cell anemia do not have a working spleen by the end of childhood, so are at risk of infections. People with sickle cell anemia tend to have more red blood cells than people without the condition as their body over compensates for the red blood cells.

Answer 2

Sickle cell anemia is a homozygous recessive disorder. This means that an individual must receive two homozygous alleles from each of their parents in order to be affected by the disease. This gene then produces an abnormal shape - a "sickle" shape - of hemoglobin, resulting in clots of blood as they cannot fit through narrow capillaries.

Answer 3

Sickle cell anemia is a genetic disease, so it occurs because individuals in the population carry a gene that causes it and pass it on to their offspring. Technically, sickle cell anemia is caused by having two copies of the gene, so each parent would have to carry at least one copy of the gene and contribute a copy to the zygote. When an individual has only one copy of the gene, they are said to have sickle cell disease, a less severe form.

Answer 4

ickle-cell disease, usually presenting in childhood, occurs more commonly in people (or their descendants) from parts of tropical and sub-tropical regions where malaria is or was common. The prevalence of the disease in the United States is approximately 1 in 5,000, mostly affecting Americans of Sub-Saharan African descent. In simplified terms usually black people.

Read more: Who_does_Sickle_Cell_Anemia_effect

Answer 5

Sickle Cell Anemia affects everywhere because it travels in the blood.

Answer 6

Sickle cell anemia is when there is a change in the order of bases in a person's DNA that causes the red blood cells to be deformed.

Answer 7

It distorts the shape of the red blood cells which are then destroyed by the body. The lack of red blood cells is anemia.

Answer 8

it blocks other blood cells