40 Fun Facts About Anemia

Which Nobel Prize-winning scientist died in 1934 of aplastic anemia, likely brought on by years of radiation exposure?

Marie Curie carried tubes of radioactive material in her pockets, and her papers from the 1890s are still considered too dangerous to handle.

Which common kitchen vegetable can give dogs and cats hemolytic anemia by damaging their red blood cells?

Onions contain sulfur compounds that destroy a pet's red blood cells, and garlic and chives are toxic in the same way, whether raw, cooked or powdered.

A 2022 study found that which professionals destroy red blood cells about 54% faster than normal throughout a mission?

Astronauts keep losing red blood cells at the faster rate for as long as they stay in orbit, and the effect was still measurable a year after landing.

Which food, eaten raw in large amounts, became the first effective treatment for pernicious anemia in the 1920s?

Liver worked so well that the three Americans behind the treatment shared the 1934 Nobel Prize in Medicine for taming a disease that had always been fatal.

Carrying a single copy of the sickle cell gene gives people partial protection against which mosquito-borne disease?

Malaria kills far fewer people who carry one copy of the gene, which is why the sickle cell trait is most common in regions where the disease is widespread.

Which part of the body can turn spoon-shaped, a sign called koilonychia, in long-standing iron-deficiency anemia?

Fingernails that scoop upward are nicknamed spoon nails, and the same change can be caused by a person's occupation rather than a shortage of iron.

Which term describes a craving to eat non-foods such as ice, clay or soil, a classic sign of iron deficiency?

Pica takes its name from the Latin word for magpie, a bird once believed to eat almost anything, and craving ice is thought to be the form most specific to low iron.

Which leafy vegetable looks rich in iron on paper but contains oxalates that stop the body absorbing most of it?

Spinach owes its muscle-building reputation to Popeye, yet it is no better a source of iron than many other vegetables.

Which 1990s American tennis champion carries thalassemia minor, a trait common in families with Mediterranean roots?

Pete Sampras, whose mother was born in Greece, won 14 Grand Slam singles titles despite a trait that can cause mild anemia.

T-Boz, a spokesperson for people living with sickle cell disease, found fame in the 1990s with which girl group?

TLC singer Tionne 'T-Boz' Watkins was diagnosed as a child, went public in 1996 and spent four months in hospital with a flare-up in 2002.

Pernicious anemia develops when the gut cannot absorb which vitamin, one that plant foods barely supply?

B12 is found almost only in animal foods, which is why vegans are at risk of running short even when their gut absorbs it normally.

Which B vitamin, added to flour in many countries to prevent birth defects, also protects against megaloblastic anemia?

Folic acid is needed to copy DNA, so without it red blood cells cannot divide properly and grow abnormally large instead.

Which savoury spread did Dr Lucy Wills find could cure a severe anemia of pregnancy among textile workers in Bombay?

Marmite was the cheapest of the yeast extracts that worked, and the mystery ingredient behind the cure was later identified as a B vitamin.

Which Wild West sharpshooter died of pernicious anemia in 1926, just as doctors were finding the first treatment?

Annie Oakley died in Ohio at 66, around the time two American doctors showed that a special diet could save patients with the disease.

Which former US First Lady was diagnosed with aplastic anemia in 1960, two years before her death in New York?

Eleanor Roosevelt was diagnosed soon after being struck by a car, and steroids given in 1962 awakened a dormant tuberculosis that proved fatal.

Which hormone, a treatment for anemia in kidney disease, was abused by professional cyclists to boost endurance?

Erythropoietin, or EPO, is made mainly by the kidneys and tells the body to make more red blood cells, which carry extra oxygen to working muscles.

Thalassemia, an inherited anemia first described in Mediterranean families, takes its name from the Greek word for what?

Sea is thalassa in Greek, and the severe form was known as Mediterranean anemia until its genetics were better understood.

Chlorosis, an old name for the anemia of pale young women, was popularly known as the sickness of which colour?

Green sickness was named for the faint tinge some patients' skin took on, and in 1554 a German physician labelled it the disease of virgins.

People with the enzyme disorder G6PD deficiency can suffer sudden hemolytic anemia after eating which legume?

Fava beans, also sold as broad beans, give the reaction its other name, favism, and turn up in foods such as falafel.

A mother-baby mismatch in which blood group can cause severe newborn anemia, now largely prevented by an injection?

Rhesus disease is named after the macaques whose red blood cells were used in the experiments that revealed the blood group.

Which blood-feeding gut worm, picked up through bare feet on contaminated soil, is a major cause of anemia worldwide?

Hookworm was once so common in the American South that it was nicknamed the germ of laziness, and a Rockefeller campaign set out to eradicate it.

Which toxic metal, once widely used for water pipes, causes anemia by blocking the body's production of heme?

Lead jams two of the enzymes that build heme, and young children can absorb up to four or five times as much of it as adults from the same dose.

Heme iron, the form the human gut absorbs most easily, comes mainly from which kind of food?

Red meat supplies iron bound in heme, of which the gut absorbs 15 to 35 percent, far more than it manages from the iron in plants.

Which vitamin, one that humans unlike most animals cannot make themselves, helps the gut absorb iron from plant foods?

Vitamin C makes the iron in plant foods easier to absorb, while too much calcium, zinc or manganese has the opposite effect.

Aplastic anemia can be treated with a transplant of which tissue, which has stopped producing enough new blood cells?

Bone marrow in a healthy adult is packed with blood stem cells, but in aplastic anemia most of them vanish and are replaced by fat.

Apart from pregnancy, what is the most common cause of iron-deficiency anemia in women of reproductive age?

Heavy periods top the list for younger women, whereas in men and in women past the menopause the usual culprit is slow bleeding in the stomach or intestines.

The Lucky Iron Fish, an ingot boiled in cooking pots to fight iron deficiency, was developed in which country?

Cambodia's villagers rejected a plain disc and a lotus-shaped block, but accepted an ingot modelled on a fish that local folklore considers lucky.

Casgevy, approved in 2023 for sickle cell disease, was the first medicine based on which gene-editing technology?

CRISPR is used to edit the patient's own blood stem cells, which are returned in a single infusion after chemotherapy has cleared space for them.

The Coggins test screens which animals for an infectious anemia, spread by biting insects, nicknamed swamp fever?

Horses that test positive stay infected for life, so most shows and many US states demand a negative result before an animal can travel.

Which US president signed the National Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act into law?

Richard Nixon signed it in May 1972, having asked Congress the year before for more money for research, treatment and education on the disease.

Which double Nobel laureate showed in 1949 that sickle cell anemia stems from an abnormal hemoglobin molecule?

Linus Pauling's paper introduced the idea of a molecular disease, and the exact fault in the hemoglobin was pinned down seven years later.

Which protein stores iron inside the body's cells, making its blood level the usual test of iron reserves?

Ferritin keeps iron in a soluble, non-toxic form, and its level in the blood mirrors how much of the metal the whole body has in reserve.

Which yellow pigment, released as red blood cells break down, builds up and causes jaundice in hemolytic anemia?

Bilirubin from years of rapid red cell breakdown can also harden into gallstones, a common complication of long-term hemolysis.

Which condition, also called Willis–Ekbom disease, is often linked to low iron and can be an early clue to anemia?

Restless legs syndrome is thought to arise when the brain runs short of iron, which it needs to make the chemical messenger dopamine.

Which protein made by the stomach lining is missing in pernicious anemia, so the gut cannot absorb a key vitamin?

Intrinsic factor was discovered by William Castle, who showed it was needed to absorb a second, extrinsic ingredient supplied by food.

Which term names the opposite of anemia, an excess of red blood cells that can develop at high altitude?

Polycythemia can be a healthy response to thin air, but the form called polycythemia vera is treated by drawing off blood to cut the risk of clots.

Which immature red blood cells do doctors count to judge how well the body is replacing the cells lost in anemia?

Reticulocytes spend about a day in the bloodstream before maturing, and take their name from a mesh-like network seen inside them when stained.

Which London physician, also remembered for a disease of the adrenal glands, first clearly described pernicious anemia?

Thomas Addison joined Guy's Hospital in London in 1817 and is traditionally regarded as one of its great men.

Which hormone acts as the body's master regulator of iron, shutting down absorption from the gut when stores are full?

Hepcidin was first noticed as a germ-killing peptide made in the liver, before its role as the gatekeeper of iron became clear.

The first patient described with sickle cell disease, in Chicago in 1910, was a dental student from which island?

Grenada was where Walter Clement Noel returned to practise dentistry after an intern in Chicago spotted the strange elongated cells in his blood.