Essays on Thalassemia

Guided by the findings of both the objective and subjective assessment of the 3 year old, the differential diagnosis that could be derived includes; iron deficiency anemia, thalassemia or lead toxicity. Each of these conditions is associated with microcytic hypochromic anemia as a classical feature. Both thalassemia and lead toxicity can be excluded from the scenario on the basis that thalassemia is a genetically inherited condition that runs in a family and no other member lives with the condition. Lead toxicity cannot predominantly feature in this case since from the subjective assessment, there is no likelihood for lead levels ...

Introduction

Blood consists of erythrocytes and leucocytes suspended in it. Blood is pumped from the heart to the body through the arteries and it enters back in the heart through the veins. Blood without cells is known as plasma while serum is the straw colored liquid obtained after the removal of the clot. Plasma contains different proteins, nutrients and waste materials. There are different cases of blood disorders observed in humans.

Blood cells and platelets

The most abundant cells in the blood are the anucleate, biconcave erythrocytes. They contain a red pigment known as hemoglobin (Hb) that carries dioxygen (O2). Hb contains four subunits each ...

Orphan Drug

Introduction The main purpose for the enactment of the U.S. Orphan Drug Act (ODA) of 1983 is to conduct a research on some of the rare diseases whose medical needs remain to be unresolved. The law has given incentives to various sponsors who have tried to develop therapies for some of the rare medical conditions that can affect at least 200,000 individuals on a yearly basis (Premiere Research 1). For this study, the objective is to create a regulatory strategy or path for Orphan Drug development, particularly on the oral iron chelator, one of the subsets of thalassemia or ...

Beta thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder triggered by the absence or reduced production of hemoglobin. It is regarded as a genetic or hereditary insufficiency in the permutation of beta globin chains (Galanello and Origa). A newly born child needs two globin genes from each of the parents to generate beta globin chains. If one or two of these genetic factors or materials are deficient, it will form into the beta thalassemia disease. Moreover, beta thalassemia also hinges on how many genes are transmuted. Beta thalassemia minor is produced if only one of the globin genes is mutated. If both ...

Objective 2

Introduction 2 General background 3 Resistance mutants 4 Hemoglobin mutants 4 Sickle Cell Anemia and Genetics: Background Information 5 Connection of Sickle cell with Malaria 6 Method: 7 Introduction of Recombinant DNA technology in diagnosing disease: 8 Discussion (implementation of recombinant DNA technology to solve the issue) 9 Conclusions 10

References 11

Objective This report targets to study a group of people that has developed resistance to malaria. It will focus on the use of recombinant DNA technology to study this cohort and gain insights into the nature of this observation. This ...

Hemoglobinopathies: Analytic Diagnostic Techniques

Hemoglobinopathies and Thalassemia’s are a kind of Genetic disorders caused mainly by a mutation or deletion of Globin genes in Hemoglobin. Hemoglobin consist of α or β Amino acid chains. An alteration in α chain production leads to α Thalassemia and alteration in β chain causes β Thalassemia. Hemoglobinopathies on the other hand may be caused due to the structural abnormalities or alteration of amino acid sequences in the Globin genes. These are mainly hereditary and constitute to around 4 to 5% of the world population. (WHO Statistics, 2012) Each year around 250,000 to 300,000 new born children have either hemoglobinopathies or thalassemia. Both ...

In clinical transplantation, an observed complication is that previous red blood cell (RBC) transfusions may reduce the risk of solid organ transplant rejection but increase the risk of bone marrow transplant (BMT) graft failure (Storb and Weiden, 1981). This statement is seemingly a contradiction. It is difficult to understand how RBC transfusions can both reduce the risk of solid organ transplant rejection and increase the risk of BMT rejection. But this contradiction can be resolved by understanding three considerations. First, the immune system is extremely complex and attempts to control its effects routinely have both positive and negative effects ( ...

Introduction

An article published by the Cochrane Collaboration and posted in the Cochrane Library in 2012 caught my attention. The article stated that no quasi-randomized or randomized clinical trials of gene therapy for sickle cell disease have been documented. The article further stated that no conclusions and recommendations are attributed to the application of gene therapy on sickle cell disease (Olowoyeye & Okwundu, 2013). This statement inspired me to evaluate the current developments in gene therapy that targets sickle cell disease. Sickle cell disease is one of the oldest genetic disorders and yet few attempts have been made to develop gene ...

Epidemiology of Thalassemia among the population of Malta

This discussion is about epidemiology of thalassemia in Malta. Thalassemia is the given name of a category of genetic blood confusions typify by anemia because of augmentation of red blood cell destruction (Barnes, Plotnikoff, Fox, and Pendleton, 2000). Hemoglobin, it is the conducting of oxygen of the red blood cells dwelling by the two diverse proteins which are the alpha and beta. In case that the body doesn’t construct sufficient with these two proteins, the red blood cells is inadequate and cannot bring enough oxygen (Sembulingum K. Et Al, N.D.). It is a severe with a more than few of health ...

Child and adolescent health issues require extra concentration due to the fact that an early disease can lead to an improper growth which may impact the entire life of a person and therefore it is important to ensure that childhood and adolescence diseases are looked after with extreme care in order to improve the quality of life and the growth of the patients. Sickle cell anemia is one of the widely studied subjects today, considering that it can cause acute chronic conditions which include severe pain and organ dysfunctional ties and has a high fatality rate. This disease is also known ...

According to an article written on November 14th, 2011, in New York Times by Donald McNeil on recent research findings on sickle cell anemia element responsible for its protective nature when it comes to malaria, a lot could be deciphered. Donald first provides an overview of the prevalence of Sickle cell anemia in West Africa and how it can be inherited either resulting to sickle cell trait or sickle cell anemia (McNeil, 2011). The article begins by providing a summary of the morphological changes that occurs at the red blood cell level when a malaria parasite enters a given cell (McNeil, 2011). Donald ...