BACKGROUND The retinopathy is an uncommon complication in individuals with sickle cell trait except for the cases of sickle cell trait associated with systemic arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, syphilis, tuberculosis and sarcoidosis. CASE PRESENTATION A retinopathy in a 16 year-old child with no history of consanguinity in the parents revealed a sickle S trait associated to heterozygo...

Experiments were carried out to test the hypothesis that the differences between the surfaces of erythrocytes from normal and sickle cell patients are reflected in the degree of attachment to the capillary lining. An assay was used that measured the number of 51Cr-labeled erythrocytes (normal or sickle) attaching to a monolayer of endothelium cultured from calf aortas. Under these conditions, e...

BACKGROUND There are a paucity of data on epistaxis as it pertains to sickle cell anaemia. Some case studies suggest epistaxis to be a significant complication in patients with sickle cell anaemia in sub-Saharan Africa; however, no robust studies have sought to establish the epidemiology or pathophysiology of this phenomenon. METHODS We conducted a case-control study with the aim of investiga...

An automated technique is described which is capable of detecting sickle-cell haemoglobin and differentiating the sickle-cell trait from sickle-cell anaemia. The method is based upon the Itano solubility test and utilizes Technicon equipment.

URING the past fifteen years, data on the frequency of the sickle cell D gene have accumulated to such an extent that its world distribution can now be outlined in considerable detail. Frequencies of more than 20 percent of ‘the sickle cell trait have been found in populations across a broad belt of tropical Africa from the Gambia to Mozambique. Similar high frequencies have been found in Greec...

Sickle cell disease is a multisystem characterised by chronic haemolytic anaemia, painful vaso-occlusive crises and acute end-organ damage. It one of the most common serious inherited single gene conditions worldwide has major impact on health affected individuals. Peri-operative complications are higher in patients with sickle compared general population may be or non-sickle-related. Complicat...

Herrick [1] was the first to discover sickle cell hemoglobin ( 2 2) with sickle-shaped erythrocytes. In 1910, he described the case of a young black student from the West Indies with severe anemia characterized by “peculiar elongated and sickle-shaped red blood corpuscles.” Herrick also noted a slightly increased volume of urine of low specific gravity and thus observed the most frequent featur...

Patients with sickle cell disease have high morbidity and healthcare utilization due to repeated painful crises. Some coexisting conditions which cause pain similar to sickle cell disease may go undiagnosed in these patients. We report two adults with concurrent hyperparathyroidism who experienced significant improvement in sickle cell pain following parathyroidectomy thereby pointing to hyperp...

Hemolytic anemia in sickle disease involves both intravascular and extravascular destruction of erythrocytes. Since the latter presumably involves the reticuloendothelial system, we have examined interactions between sickle erythrocytes and macrophages. In erythrophagocytosis assays, 18.9 +/- 7.2% of human marrow macrophages ingest sickle RBCs, while only 3.1 +/- 2.1% ingest normal RBCs. This a...

BACKGROUND We aimed to determine the incidence of co-inheritance as well as interaction of sickle cell trait (SCT) and α(thal)/β(thal) mutations in south and south central of Iran. METHOD We employed a PCR and restriction fragment length polymorphism techniques to confirm diagnosis of sickle cell trait. All subjects were screened for any α/β -thalassemia mutations using a gap-polymerase chain...