Will all patients with sickle cell anemia benefit from using hydroxyurea?
Probably not. We don’t know for sure which patients are most likely to benefit, but the results we obtained came from severely affected patients, and we think that treatment with HU should probably be reserved for patients with frequent crises. There are patients with other types of sickle cell disease–hemoglobin SC disease for example–who did not participate in the trial. Could hydroxyurea help such patients? Since most patients with hemoglobin SC disease have fewer crises than the patients in our study, they probably would not think that the inconvenience of frequent blood counts, and the possible risks of treatment, were worth the possible gain. A few patients with Hb SC disease do have frequent crises, and they theoretically could benefit from treatment with hydroxyurea. Can hydroxyurea save a patient’s life? No, in an acute situation, like a stroke or heart, lung or kidney failure. It cannot make such problems go away, any more than it can make an on-going painful crisis go away
