Sickle-Cell Anemia is a hereditary condition in which hemoglobin, an oxygen-carrying protein in the blood, is altered, leading to periodic interruptions in blood circulation. In the United States the disease is found generally in Africa-Americans, of which approximately 1 in 400 are affected; it also occurs in the Middle East and the Mediterranean area.

             Symptoms of Sickle Cell disease usually begin show up at about six months of age and may include, but are not limited to: the enlargement of the abdomen and heart, and painful swelling of the hands and feet. In adolescence, sexual maturity may be delayed in those which are effected by sickle cell anemia. The sickle-shaped red cells interfere with normal blood flow by plugging up small blood vessels.

             Unlike normal red blood cells, which last about 120 days in the bloodstream, sickled red cells die after only about 10 to 20 days. Because they cannot be replaced fast enough, the blood is chronically short of red blood cells, a condition called anemia.

             Normal red blood cells are round like doughnuts, and they move through small blood tubes in the body to deliver oxygen. Sickle red blood cells become hard, sticky and shaped like sickles used to cut wheat. When these hard and pointed red cells go through the small blood tube, they clog the flow and break apart. This can cause pain, damage and a low blood count, or anemia.

             Sickle-cell anemia occurs when an child inherits a sickle-cell gene from each parent. Programs have been started to try and find out if people are carriers, who do not show the trait themselves; such carriers are informed that a child resulting from the union of two carriers runs a one-in-four risk of having sickle-cell disease. Since the disease needs two infected parents to affect the child, it does not occur more often in a particular sex, as it is on all of the carriers or the infected person"s sex cells. You can not catch sickle cell disease, you are born with the sickle cell hemoglobin and it is present for life.