Who can contract sickle cell disease?
Q: My cousin who has sickle cell disease told me that it’s not just a disease of black people. Is that true? _D.S., Fort Lee, N.J. A: Sickle cell disease is not a disease of race, but a disease of geographic distribution. The red blood cell mutation of sickle cell disease actually has a protective effect against malaria. Ancestors of those who have sickle cell disease today had a distinct survival advantage against malaria. Those with the sickle cell gene mutation were less likely to die from malaria and more likely to survive and pass on their genes. If your ancestry was from an area where malaria was prevalent, you have a much higher chance of having a sickle cell gene mutation _ regardless of your race. In fact, there’s sickle cell disease among Caucasians in southern Italy, Sicily, northern Greece, the Middle East, southern Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and India. In contrast to sickle cell disease, sickle cell trait is an inherited condition where a person has one normal hemoglobin gene a
