Is it possible for white people to have Sickle Cell Anemia?

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Sickle cell anemia is a hereditary disorder that mostly affects people of African ancestry, but also occurs in other ethnic groups, including people who are of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern descent. More than 70,000 Americans have sickle cell anemia. And about 2 million Americans - and one in 12 African Americans - have sickle cell trait (this means they carry one gene for the disease, but do not have the disease itself).

Sickle cell anemia occurs when a person inherits two abnormal genes (one from each parent) that cause their red blood cells to change shape. Instead of being flexible and round, these cells are more rigid and curved in the shape of the farm tool known as a sickle - that's where the disease gets its name. The shape is similar to a crescent moon.

What Is Sickle Cell Anemia?

Sickle cell anemia is a blood disorder that affects hemoglobin (pronounced: hee-muh-glow-bin), a protein found in red blood cells that helps carry oxygen throughout the body.

Red blood cells with normal hemoglobin (HbA) move easily through the bloodstream, delivering oxygen to all of the cells of the body. Normal red blood cells are shaped like doughnuts with the centers partially scooped out and are soft and flexible.

Sickle cell anemia occurs when an abnormal form of hemoglobin (HbS) is produced. HbS molecules tend to clump together, making red blood cells sticky, stiff, and more fragile, and causing them to form into a curved, sickle shape. Red blood cells containing HbS can go back and forth between being shaped normally and being sickle shaped until they eventually become sickle shaped permanently. Instead of moving through the bloodstream easily, these sickle cells can clog blood vessels and deprive the body's tissues and organs of the oxygen they need to stay healthy.

Unlike normal red blood cells that last about 4 months in the bloodstream, fragile sickle cells break down after only about 10 to 20 days, which usually causes anemia. Anemia (pronounced: uh-nee-mee-uh) is what happens when the body's number of red blood cells (or amount of hemoglobin) falls below normal. People who are anemic often feel weak and tire more easily.

People with sickle cell anemia can also experience complications from blood circulation and infection-fighting problems. These include a higher risk of certain infections and stroke as well as a condition called acute chest syndrome, which is caused by infection or trapped red blood cells in the lungs.

Sickle cell anemia is not contagious, so you can't catch it from someone else or pass it to another person like a cold or other infection. People with sickle cell anemia have inherited two sickle cell genes, one from each parent. A child who has inherited the sickle cell gene from only one parent will not develop the disease, but will have sickle cell trait. People who have sickle cell trait don't have sickle cell anemia or symptoms of the disease, but they can pass the sickle cell gene to their own children.

Because people with sickle cell trait don't have the disease, they may never discover that they carry the gene. That's why it's recommended that teens who are unsure of their sickle cell status ask their doctors about testing. The National Institutes of Health recommends that all newborns be screened for sickle cell disease, and testing at birth is now required in almost every state. This helps infants with sickle cell anemia get the care and treatment they need right away.

What Can You Do to Stay Well?

With the right precautions, teens with sickle cell disease can do most of the stuff other teens do. To stay as healthy as possible, people with sickle cell anemia should take these steps:

Eat a balanced, healthy diet.

Take vitamins, including folic acid supplements, as prescribed.

Drink plenty of water to prevent dehydration.

Avoid extreme cold or heat.

Exercise regularly, but in moderation. Exercise is important for staying healthy, but overdoing it can trigger a crisis in some people, particularly if they become dehydrated, overheated, or exhausted.

Get plenty of rest.

Avoid alcohol, drugs, and smoking, which can aggravate sickle cell disease and its symptoms. Some people with sickle cell disease are prone to lung problems, so smoking is particularly risky.

Avoid places low in oxygen. (For example, it's not a good idea to go hiking at high altitudes or spend lots of time swimming under water.)

Prevent serious infections by contacting your doctor as soon as illness symptoms start. Be sure to get any immunizations (such as pneumonia and flu vaccines) that the doctor recommends.

Learn as much as you can about the disease and see your doctor regularly to help prevent complications.

There are some limits that people with sickle cell disease may need to put on their lives, but with the help of doctors, friends, and family, teens with sickle cell anemia can manage the disease and live their lives to the fullest.

Who is Affected?

In the United States people are often surprised when they learn that a person who is not African American has sickle cell disease. The disease originated in at least 4 places in Africa and in the Indian/Saudi Arabian subcontinent. It exists in all countries of Africa and in areas where Africans have migrated.

It is most common in West and Central Africa where as many as 25% of the people have sickle cell trait and 1-2% of all babies are born with a form of the disease. In the United States with an estimated population of over 270 million, about 1,000 babies are born with sickle cell disease each year. In contrast, Nigeria, with an estimated 1997 population of 90 million, 45,000-90,000 babies with sickle cell disease are born each year.

The transatlantic slave trade was largely responsible for introducing the sickle cell gene into the Americas and the Caribbean. However, sickle cell disease had already spread from Africa to Southern Europe by the time of the slave trade, so it is present in Portuguese, Spaniards, French Corsicans, Sardinians, Sicilians, mainland Italians, Greeks, Turks and Cypriots. Sickle cell disease appears in most of the Near and Middle East countries including Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Yemen.

The condition has also been reported in India and Sri Lanka. Sickle cell disease is an international health problem and truly a global challenge.

All these countries must work together to solve the problem and find effective treatments and ultimately a cure. The knowledge and expertise in the management of sickle cell disease acquired in the technologically advanced countries must be shared with the less developed countries where patients die at alarming rates.

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Sickle cell is a mutation of hemoglobin. It has nothing to do with skin color. In principle anyone could inherit the pair of genes that causes the illness. Genes for skin color and hemoglobin appear to live close to each other, though. It's theoretically possible for normal crossover to move genes for dark coloring away from the hemoglobin gene. Then, in the next generation, offspring could get one without the other. If that happened in both the mother's and father's lineage, then the child could inherit sickle cell hemoglobin from both without inheriting the tendency towards dark coloring. If the genes are very close to each other, though, it would take a very rare crossover event to separate them from each other. Even then, it would happen only when a black/white couple had children - common enough, but not the most common case. It's theoretically possible, but not likely.

Yes, white people can get sickle cell, but it is much more common that white people only carry the trait, not the disease! Sickle cell anemia needs two recessive genes to develop the disease, and this is uncommon in the white genotype.

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Yes. These are both genetic disorders. The mutation for each of these genes is more common in blacks (sickle cell) and whites (cystic fibrosis). But carriage of the mutation in other races is not unheard of.

It is possible to have sickle cell anemia if you are of any race. It does have a predisposition to be more common among certain groups, but people in all groups can get it. You can get it from genetics, from nutrition, and from certain types of illnesses. It involves a change in the bodies' ability to produce oxygen.

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Various Mediterranean people can have sickle cell.

NOT AS COMMON

only if you have african american in you