40 Fun Facts About Sickle Cell Disease

Carrying one copy of the sickle cell gene gives partial protection against which deadly mosquito-borne disease?

Malaria is far less likely to kill people who carry a single sickle cell gene, which is why the gene stayed common wherever that infection was widespread.

Which singer, diagnosed with sickle cell anemia as a child, later told her story in the book A Sick Life?

T-Boz of TLC has been in and out of hospital since the age of seven, and she became a spokesperson for the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America.

World Sickle Cell Day is marked every year on the same date as which American federal holiday?

Juneteenth and World Sickle Cell Day both fall on June 19, when supporters hold Shine the Light gatherings to draw attention to the condition.

Sickle cells get their name from a curved, single-handed farm tool traditionally used for which job?

Harvesting grain has been the sickle's job since prehistoric times, and its crescent blade matches the bent shape that red blood cells take on in the disease.

In which city is Supacell set, the Netflix superhero series whose heroes share a family history of sickle cell disease?

South London is home to the five strangers in Supacell, and creator Rapman wrote their superpowers as a mutation of sickle cell.

Which jazz trumpeter lived with sickle cell anemia, a source of severe joint pain during the 1960s?

Miles Davis underwent hip replacement surgery in 1965 using a graft from his own shin, and poor health later kept him off the stage for five years.

In 2019 Victoria Gray became the first sickle cell patient to be treated using which breakthrough technology?

CRISPR was used to edit her own blood-making cells, and in the trial that followed nearly every patient went at least a year without a severe pain crisis.

Sickle cell disease starts with a fault in which protein found inside red blood cells?

Hemoglobin carries oxygen, and its faulty sickle form clumps into stiff strands when oxygen runs low, bending the normally flexible cell into a rigid crescent.

In which toy-based film series does Noah Diaz struggle to support his younger brother Kris, who has sickle cell disease?

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, set in 1994 Brooklyn, has Noah steal a Porsche for cash, only to find the car is the Autobot Mirage in disguise.

A healthy red blood cell is commonly described as shaped like which snack?

Doughnut is the usual comparison: a healthy cell is soft and dimpled in the middle, so it squeezes through tiny vessels where a stiff sickled cell gets stuck.

Newborns across the United States are screened for sickle cell disease using blood drops taken from which body part?

Heel pricks put a few drops of blood on a special card, and all 50 states test that card for sickle cell disease and other treatable conditions.

When both parents carry sickle cell trait, what is the chance that each child will have sickle cell disease?

1 in 4 is the chance at every pregnancy, whatever happened with earlier children, and on average half of the couple's children will be carriers like their parents.

In sickle cell disease, the rapid breakdown of red blood cells can turn the whites of the eyes which color?

Yellow eyes and skin, known as jaundice, are an early sign in babies, caused by a build-up of bilirubin from broken-down red cells.

Which tissue can be transplanted from a matched donor, usually a close relative, to cure sickle cell disease?

Bone marrow transplants succeed in about 90% of children when the donor is a matched family member, because the donor's stem cells take over making red blood cells.

Which organ did NFL safety Ryan Clark lose after sickle cell trait caused a medical emergency during a game in Denver?

Spleen damage struck in Denver's thin mountain air, and the Steelers then kept Clark out of every later game the team played in that city.

Which antibiotic do young children with sickle cell disease take every day to guard against life-threatening infections?

Penicillin is given daily, usually until the age of five, because the disease damages the organ that filters bacteria out of the blood.

In which West African country are about 150,000 babies born with sickle cell disease every year?

Nigeria sees about 2% of its newborns affected, and 24% of Nigerians carry a single copy of the gene, usually without any symptoms.

Which trigger of sickle cell pain crises is the reason patients are told to ease slowly into a swimming pool?

A sudden temperature swing can set off a crisis, so NIH advice is to ease into the water gradually and to steer clear of extreme heat and cold alike.

In babies, one of the earliest signs of sickle cell disease is painful swelling in which parts of the body?

Hands and feet swell when sickled cells block the blood flow inside them, a problem doctors call dactylitis or hand-foot syndrome.

Children with sickle cell disease are given ultrasound scans of the head to check their risk of which emergency?

Stroke risk shows up on the scan as unusually fast blood flow in the brain's arteries, and regular blood transfusions lower the danger for children whose results look worrying.

James Herrick published the first medical description of sickle cell disease in 1910 while working in which US city?

Chicago cardiologist Herrick followed it two years later with a landmark article on heart attacks, arguing that a blocked coronary artery was not always fatal.

Walter Clement Noel, the first patient described with sickle cell disease, was a dental student from which island?

Grenada is where Noel went home to practice dentistry after qualifying, and he is buried in a Catholic cemetery in the north of the island.

Who first spotted the odd sickle-shaped cells under a microscope in the case James Herrick reported in 1910?

His intern, aged 27, examined the blood expecting to find a tropical infection and saw long curved cells instead, yet Herrick was the one credited with the report.

Which American chemist showed in 1949 that sickle cell anemia was a molecular disease?

Linus Pauling and his team made it the first illness ever traced to an abnormal protein, the starting point for understanding disease at the level of molecules.

Which US president signed the National Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act, funding screening and research?

Richard Nixon signed it in 1972 after a White House committee that included pediatrician Yvette Francis-McBarnette, whose clinic had screened over 20,000 schoolchildren.

Which activist group offered free sickle cell testing at its community clinics in the early 1970s?

Black Panther Party volunteers tested thousands of people, part of a set of survival programs that also ran free ambulances and handed out clothing.

Which Oscar winner directed and starred in A Warm December, a 1973 romance about a woman with sickle cell disease?

Sidney Poitier played a widowed American doctor who falls for an African ambassador's niece on holiday, then learns that one of the men trailing her is her physician.

Which rapper, one half of the duo Mobb Deep, described his lifelong battle with sickle cell anemia in his music?

Prodigy wrote about the pain on his 2000 solo debut H.N.I.C., and he was in a Las Vegas hospital with complications of the illness when he died in 2017.

Paul Williams, who lived with sickle cell anemia, was an original member and choreographer of which Motown group?

The Temptations counted him as their best dancer, and he devised stage routines for the Supremes too before failing health forced him to retire in 1971.

People living with sickle cell disease are widely known within the community by which fighting nickname?

Warriors is the word used by patient groups such as the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, which labels its support resources for warriors and caregivers.

Which daily medicine, originally a cancer drug, became the first treatment approved for sickle cell disease in 1998?

Hydroxyurea is taken by mouth and cuts painful crises by roughly 44%, yet doctors say it is still prescribed far less often than it should be.

Which country was the first to approve Casgevy, a one-time treatment for sickle cell disease, in November 2023?

United Kingdom regulators cleared it weeks before the United States did, and its American list price was set at $2.2 million per patient.

The sickle cell mutation swaps glutamic acid, at position six of a key protein chain, for which other amino acid?

Valine at that one spot was pinned down by Vernon Ingram in the 1950s, the first proof that changing a single amino acid in a protein can cause a disease.

The HBB gene, whose mutation causes sickle cell disease, sits on which numbered human chromosome?

Chromosome 11 holds the blueprint for one half of the protein, while the other half of the molecule is encoded separately on chromosome 16.

Sickle cell disease follows which pattern of inheritance, the same one seen in cystic fibrosis?

Autosomal recessive means two faulty copies are needed, one from each parent, so carriers with a single copy usually stay healthy and may never know.

In sickle cell disease, pigment from broken-down red blood cells often forms stones in which small organ?

Gallbladder stones form because constant red cell breakdown floods the bile with bilirubin, which hardens into what doctors call pigment stones.

Repeated blood transfusions for sickle cell disease can cause a harmful build-up of which metal in the organs?

Iron overload is one reason transfusions are used with care, and patients also need specially matched blood so their immune system does not attack it.

Babies with sickle cell disease stay well for about five months thanks to a protein they started making when?

Before birth the body makes a fetal form of the protein that cannot sickle, and it fades over the first months of life; one gene therapy works by switching it back on.

Outside Africa, sickle cell disease is especially common among tribal communities in the center of which Asian country?

India has hot spots in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where reported rates run from 9% to 22% in the worst-affected areas.

Which simple daily habit do doctors urge on people with sickle cell disease to help prevent pain crises?

Drinking plenty of water matters because dehydration is one of the classic triggers of a crisis, alongside stress and high altitude.