Why did sickle cell anemia originate in west africa
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The thorny history of sickle cell anemia
ByRandy Rieland
/Published Jan 25, 2023It would seem an unlikely pairing. One, pediatric hematologist Lydia Pecker, raised in Brooklyn and trained in the Bronx and Washington, D.C. The other, Lauren Anthony, recruited from Edmond, Oklahoma, to play volleyball for Johns Hopkins. But they connected through a shared interest in a knotty intersection of race and medicine—sickle cell disease.
Pecker has provided clinical care for people with the disease and been involved in related research for more than a decade, while Anthony, A&S '22, wrote her senior paper about sickle cell trait testing in the 1970s, with support from the Hugh Hawkins Research Fellowship. Now, they've broadened their focus. Together, they're examining the long history of sickle cell research and treatment at Johns Hopkins. Their work is part of the university's Racism and Repair in the Modern Academy project, with funding through the Johns Hopkins Program in Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship.
"One thing we're seeing is that a lot of th
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History of Sickle Cell Sickle Cell
Even though the underlying cause of sickle cell has been understood for more than a century, advocacy and research have been lacking. Funding for research and treatment has always been far less than other diseases.
Starting in the 1960s, the Black Panther Party worked to expand community-based care for education and treatment of diseases. Part of this initiative was tackling sickle cell, which received little public attention and funding, while affecting a large part of the Black community. Their work in the 1970s towards community-based care created a bigger movement for change in sickle cell, with a collaboration among pre-med students, hospitals, and even pharmaceutical companies donating products.
The Black Panther Party extended their work within health initiatives by setting up national screening programs, and pioneering care for genetic disorders such as sickle cell anemiaSickle cell anemiaan inherited red blood cell disorder also known as sickle cell disease. A small spark can lead to a big change—and now newborn screening
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History & Timeline of Sickle Cell Disease
Discovery of Sickle Cell Disease in the US
“Peculiar elongated and sickle-shaped” is how sickle cells were first described in 1904 by intern Ernest Edward Irons when examining the blood of Walter Clement Noel, a 20-year-old first-year dental student from a wealthy Black family in Grenada. Noel had been admitted to the Chicago Presbyterian Hospital suffering from anemia and was readmitted several times over the next three years before completing his studies and returning to Grenada to successfully practice dentistry. He died of pneumonia in 1916.
Iron’s supervising physician, James B. Herrick, wrote a paper published in 1910 in the Archives of Internal Medicine documenting the first known case of sickle cell disease in the United States.
Although this was the first known US case, elements of the disease had been recognized earlier: African medical literature reported this condition in the 1870s, when it was known in some areas as ”ogbanjes” (“children who come and go”) because of the very high infant mortality
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