Falciform Anemia, Serious Disease

Falciform anemia, serious disease

Falciform anemia is given by a genetic change in populations of Africa, the Middle East, India and the Mediterranean. Thousands of years ago, in those areas, cases of mortal malaria were presented; According to studies, this caused this mutation that consisted that parents inherited their children the genus of falciform anemia, which helped them survive the Pandemics of Paludism.

Then, the falciform anemia gene was expanded to other areas, including the West. However, at a time when malaria has more control in many countries, falciform hemoglobin is no longer necessary and becomes rather a disadvantage for survival due to the serious complications it can lead to.

For example, among the symptoms that arise, is the ease that people affected to get infections and the difficulty of facing them. They can also have respiratory problems and suffer pain, which can vary in intensity and frequency and often must be treated with analgesics.

All this is because the gene that produces hemoglobin, is damaged in such a way that it gives the organism to manufacture falciform hemoglobin. What happens is that when normal cells are usually smooth and threads; However, abnormal cells, after delivering oxygen, are grouped into rows that make them harden and take a hooded shape that prevents transit through blood vessels by making obstructions that can cause patient pain due to the lack of oxygen in The tissues and organs.

Due to the above, falciform cells can only live 10 to 20 days unlike normal ones that meet a cycle of approximately 120 days.

This causes the necessary hemoglobin demand required by the organism, is hardly fulfilled by what the anemia that indicates lack of hemoglobin in the blood occurs.

For the seriousness of the disease, described above, many efforts have been made to treat symptoms or cure it, in the best case. In this way, the symptoms it generates among those that is jaundice, drapanocytic dactylitis, fatigue or tiredness, paleness, pain, respiratory problems, infections, visual problems, spill or brain attack and late growth; All of them caused by the lack of red blood cells and the deterioration that this produces in the different organs and tissues that cannot fully fulfill their function and, therefore, seriously affect the person.

And thanks to the specific knowledge of these symptoms, treatments have been created such as blood transfusions that can be of great help to avoid strokes. Another fairly widespread treatment is the use of pain against pain, administered oral or intravenously. On the other hand, in young children, penicillin is used to combat or prevent respiratory infections, although it has been found that many of the bacteria causing pneumonia are resistant to this antibiotic.

In addition, in 1939 it was discovered that the disease with hydroxyurea could be treated, which reduced pain crises through fetal hemoglobin production. This is a type of hemoglobin produced by humans before birth and after six months there is very little of this. But several studies have shown that some people with falciform anemia can continue to produce it and among these people, there are less serious cases. That is why remedies against disease are being sought that this type of blood can increase in patients.

Bone marrow transplant is also used has proven to be a cure. However, this still presents a difficulty: the donor must be a compatible brother and the possibility that a person with falciform anemia has a brother with those characteristics is only 18%. That without taking into account the high risks of the procedure.

The most important thing for the treatment of this disease is the early diagnosis of this and the proper knowledge of its management by the patient and the family to be able to lead a healthy as possible as possible. On the other hand, it is important to be aware of all the advances in research in this issue that have been made for the improvement of these thousands of people.