Sickel Cell Anemia
...t. They're much stiffer, with a curved shape. Sickle cell anemia is a disease of the blood that gets its name because the blood cells are shaped like a sickle.The hard, curved edges of sickle cells can make these cells get clogged up inside of smaller blood vessels. This keeps blood from flowing properly in the body.Although the body attacks the sickle cells and destroys them, it can't make new blood cells fast enough to replace the old ones. This can cause the body to have too few red blood cells, a problem known as anemia. Sickle cell anemia is hereditary. For a child to get it, usually each parent is either a carrier of the sickle cell trait or has sickle cell disease. When both parents have the sickle cell trait, there is a 25% chance that a child will have sickle cell anemia. But when one parent is carrying the trait and the other actually has the disease, the odds increase to a 50% likelihood that they will pass the disorder on to their child. In the United States, sickle cell anemia affects mostly African Americans and some Hispanics. The disease occurs in about one in every 500 African-American births and one in every 1,000 to 1,400 Hispanic-American births. Some forms of sickle cell d...