There is new hope for kids suffering from the intensely painful condition called sickle cell disease. Doctors are now successfully performing bone marrow transplants on these children, completely curing them of the disease!

“I had a stroke at school in gym,” says Ravven Carter, who’s only 13. She’s already suffered brain injury because she has sickle cell disease. Ravven’s mom Vicki says, “She was twelve when this happened. We were talking about her as an advanced honor roll student, and now she’s had to start all over. Because of this she dropped to second grade level in class.”
Erin, who lives in Houston, is five years old now and used to have sickle cell disease. She says, “I remember when I had blood transplant. My brother Kendal was my donor.”
Her mom Daphne recalls, “She started having problems before she turned three. I think she had pneumonia at least once every month. She wouldn’t cry, and they told me that it was because she was in so much pain that she couldn’t cry.”
Erin is now cured.
Two years ago, she received a bone marrow transplant from her brother at the AFLAC Cancer Center and blood disorders service of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. The center has performed 18 bone marrow transplants to date, which is more than any other single institution nationally. So, the procedure is still relatively very new, but the results so far impressive at this site: a 100% cure rate and a 100% survival rate.
Sickle cell disease is due to an abnormality in the shape of the red blood cells. Normal red blood cells are soft and round and can squeeze through tiny blood vessels. With sickle cell, the blood cells become stiff, distorted in shape and have difficulty passing through the body’s small blood vessels. They block blood flow, and that causes pain and organ damage.
95% of sickle cell patients are African American. It occurs because each of the two parents are a carrier of the gene that causes sickle cell disease, and both are passed on to the child, causing the full blown condition.
Until now, there hasn’t been a cure for sickle cell disease. A lot of these patients still end up with severe damage to many organs and they die prematurely. “The most common cause is severe overwhelming infection with bacteria other causes include severe stroke, severe episodes of an illness that’s very similar to pneumonia and then later in life damage to other organs like the kidneys and the heart,” says Dr. Peter Lane, Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University.
But thanks to bone marrow transplantation, now there’s hope for a normal life for patients like Erin. “The patients who have severe complications are the patients for whom bone marrow transplant should be considered,” says Dr. Lane.
“If she hadn’t had the bone marrow transplant she probably wouldn’t be here at 5,” Daphne insists.
For more information, click here: http://www.choa.org/OurServices/Transplant/BMT/Default.asp
http://www.sicklecelldisease.org/

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