Sickle-cell Disease

Sickle-cell disease (SCD), or sickle-cell anaemia (SCA) or drepanocytosis, is a hereditary blood disorder, characterized by red blood cells that assume an abnormal, rigid, sickle shape. Sickling decreases the cells' flexibility and results in a risk of various complications. The sickling occurs because of a mutation in the haemoglobin gene. Individuals with one copy of the defunct gene display both normal and abnormal haemoglobin. This is an example of codominance.

Life expectancy is shortened. In 1994, in the US, the average life expectancy of persons with this condition was estimated to be 42 years in males and 48 years in females, but today, thanks to better management of the disease, patients can live into their 70s or beyond.

Sickle-cell disease occurs more commonly among people whose ancestors lived in tropical and sub-tropical sub-saharan regions where malaria is or was common. Where malaria is common, carrying a single sickle-cell gene (sickle cell trait) confers a fitness. Specifically, humans with one of the two alleles of sickle-cell disease show less severe symptoms when infected with malaria.

Sickle-cell anaemia is a form of sickle-cell disease in which there is homozygosity for the mutation that causes HbS. Sickle-cell anaemia is also referred to as "HbSS", "SS disease", "haemoglobin S" or permutations of those names. In heterozygous people, that is, those who have only one sickle gene and one normal adult haemoglobin gene, the condition is referred to as "HbAS" or "sickle cell trait". Other, rarer forms of sickle-cell disease are compound heterozygous states in which the person has only one copy of the mutation that causes HbS and one copy of another abnormal haemoglobin allele. They include sickle-haemoglobin C disease (HbSC), sickle beta-plus-thalassaemia (HbS/β+) and sickle beta-zero-thalassaemia (HbS/β0).

The term disease is applied because the inherited abnormality causes a pathological condition that can lead to death and severe complications. Not all inherited variants of haemoglobin are detrimental, a concept known as genetic polymorphism.