CreepyAssNigger
01-11-2020, 06:00 PM
https://i.imgur.com/w60D5wm.jpg
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/health/sickle-cell-disease-cure.html
Helen Obando, a shy slip of a girl, lay curled in a hospital bed in June waiting for a bag of stem cells from her bone marrow, modified by gene therapy, to start dripping into her chest.
The hope was that the treatment would cure her of sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder that can cause excruciating pain, organ damage and early death.
For more than a half century, scientists have known the cause of sickle cell disease: A single mutation in a gene turns red blood cells into rigid crescent or sickle shapes instead of soft discs. These misshapen cells get stuck in veins and arteries, blocking the flow of blood that carries life-giving oxygen to the body and causing the disease’s horrifying hallmark: episodes of agony that begin in babyhood.
Millions of people globally, a vast majority of them Africans, suffer from sickle cell disease. Researchers have worked for decades on improving treatment and finding a cure, but experts say the effort has been hindered by chronic underfunding, in part because most of the estimated 100,000 people in the United States who have the disease are African-American, often poor or of modest means.
Like many others affected by sickle cell, the Obando family faced a double whammy: not one but two children with the disease, Helen and her older sister, Haylee. They lived with one hope for a cure, a dangerous and sometimes fatal bone marrow transplant usually reserved for those with a healthy sibling as a match.
Sickle cell is progressive, and every year, it wreaks more devastating damage to her body.
Doctors warned the parents that if they had another baby, the odds were one in four that the child would have sickle cell, too. But they decided to take the chance.
“I was young, naïve,” Ms. Cintron said.
Less than two years later, Helen was born. As bad as Haylee’s disease was, Helen’s was much worse. When she was 9 months old, a severe blockage of blood flow in her pelvis destroyed bone. She screamed with pain, no longer able to sit up.
At age 2, her spleen, which helps fight bacterial infections, became dangerously enlarged because of blocked blood flow. That can cause severe anemia, so doctors surgically removed the organ.
Because the misshapen red blood cells live just a fifth as long as normal ones, Helen developed gallstones from the byproducts of recycling huge numbers of dying cells. Her gallbladder was removed when she was 10.
She was hospitalized 13 times with acute chest syndrome, a potentially deadly blockage of blood flow within the lungs. And because she no longer had a spleen, Helen developed a bacterial infection in her spine, resulting in intense pain and a long hospitalization for intravenous antibiotics.
After Helen was born, her parents decided not to have any more children. But four years later, Ms. Cintron discovered she was pregnant again. “I cried for months,” she said. “I was devastated.”
This is one of many potential risks when humans engage in miscegenation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/health/sickle-cell-disease-cure.html
Helen Obando, a shy slip of a girl, lay curled in a hospital bed in June waiting for a bag of stem cells from her bone marrow, modified by gene therapy, to start dripping into her chest.
The hope was that the treatment would cure her of sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder that can cause excruciating pain, organ damage and early death.
For more than a half century, scientists have known the cause of sickle cell disease: A single mutation in a gene turns red blood cells into rigid crescent or sickle shapes instead of soft discs. These misshapen cells get stuck in veins and arteries, blocking the flow of blood that carries life-giving oxygen to the body and causing the disease’s horrifying hallmark: episodes of agony that begin in babyhood.
Millions of people globally, a vast majority of them Africans, suffer from sickle cell disease. Researchers have worked for decades on improving treatment and finding a cure, but experts say the effort has been hindered by chronic underfunding, in part because most of the estimated 100,000 people in the United States who have the disease are African-American, often poor or of modest means.
Like many others affected by sickle cell, the Obando family faced a double whammy: not one but two children with the disease, Helen and her older sister, Haylee. They lived with one hope for a cure, a dangerous and sometimes fatal bone marrow transplant usually reserved for those with a healthy sibling as a match.
Sickle cell is progressive, and every year, it wreaks more devastating damage to her body.
Doctors warned the parents that if they had another baby, the odds were one in four that the child would have sickle cell, too. But they decided to take the chance.
“I was young, naïve,” Ms. Cintron said.
Less than two years later, Helen was born. As bad as Haylee’s disease was, Helen’s was much worse. When she was 9 months old, a severe blockage of blood flow in her pelvis destroyed bone. She screamed with pain, no longer able to sit up.
At age 2, her spleen, which helps fight bacterial infections, became dangerously enlarged because of blocked blood flow. That can cause severe anemia, so doctors surgically removed the organ.
Because the misshapen red blood cells live just a fifth as long as normal ones, Helen developed gallstones from the byproducts of recycling huge numbers of dying cells. Her gallbladder was removed when she was 10.
She was hospitalized 13 times with acute chest syndrome, a potentially deadly blockage of blood flow within the lungs. And because she no longer had a spleen, Helen developed a bacterial infection in her spine, resulting in intense pain and a long hospitalization for intravenous antibiotics.
After Helen was born, her parents decided not to have any more children. But four years later, Ms. Cintron discovered she was pregnant again. “I cried for months,” she said. “I was devastated.”
This is one of many potential risks when humans engage in miscegenation.