Sickle Cell Anemia - Why Early Detection is Important

Dr. Ludovico Guarini: Newborn screening a drop of blood is obtained from the newborn to check for a number of genetic disorders and one of the genetic disorder is actually to check for the sickle cell disease and the reason why we want to know about sickle cell disease at birth rather than a few months afterwards, is because one of the major concerns early in life with sickle cell disease is infection.

And all babies with sickle cell disease are detected at birth and they are essentially started on antibiotics, penicillin to prevent infection very early in their life in the first couple of months.

Host: What kind of infections are they prone to?

Dr. Ludovico Guarini: There are infections - there are bacterial infections that are typically Pneumococcus, which is one of the bacterias that is involved in giving people Pneumonia, but in this particular group of patients since they can't handle it well, because of the spleen problems, they ensue in this particular disease becomes what we call sepsis infection of the blood that can be potentially lethal and very rapidly.

There are very good studies that have shown that the use of the penicillin during the first five years of life essentially almost completely prevents that problem.


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