Why Does Sickle Cell Anemia Primarily Affect African Americans? by Malika Jones

        SCA the Silent African American Killer

Introduction

Anyone is susceptible to inheriting sickle cell anemia (SCA) because it is a genetic disease. However, according to Solovief et al. (2011), sickle cell anemia is most common among African Americans. Based on such considerations, we aim to provide an overview of the research on why SCA primarily affects African Americans, which is essential for future research and studies. For this study, we evaluated scholarly reviewed articles to answer the question: Why does sickle cell anemia primarily affect African Americans?

SCA in African Americans

In a study conducted by Solovieff et al. (2011), they compare the ratio of sickle cell anemia in African Americans relative to Black Africans and Caucasians. They used a sample size of 1,810 African Americans with SCD, African Americans without SCD, and various Black African and Caucasian European populations, as seen in Table 3 (Solovieff et al., 2011).

Conclusion

This study determined that African Americans with less than 20% to 30% European genetic admixture are likely to have the sickle hemoglobin (HbS) gene. African Americans with SCD have a similar genetic substructure to Yorubans, Mandenkas, and Bantus (Solovieff et al., 2011). Therefore, the lack of Caucasian admixture in African Americans likely results in SCA. While our research was limited to articles and external sources, this study can lead to future internalized testing on SCA.

                                                                  

  Reference

Sleiman, Jad. “We Had a Chance to Wipe out Sickle Cell. and, We Didn't.” WHYY, WHYY, 24 Jan. 2019, https://whyy.org/segments/we-had-a-chance-to-wipe-out-sickle-cell-and-we-didnt/. 

Solovieff, Nadia, et al. “Ancestry of African Americans with Sickle Cell Disease.” Blood Cells, Molecules & Diseases, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 15 June 2011, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3116635/.