How Sickle Cell Anemia Affects the Body

MEDICAL ANIMATION TRANSCRIPT: Sickle cell anemia is an inherited blood disease that affects your red blood cells. It’s one of the most common and usually most severe forms of a group of red blood cell disorders, called sickle cell disease. In order to survive, your body needs red blood cells to supply oxygen to its tissues. Red blood cells are made inside the center of your bones, called bone marrow. There, immature cells, called blood stem cells, can divide to make all types of blood cells, including red blood cells. Normal red blood cells are disc shaped. Each of them contains protein molecules, called hemoglobin, that carry oxygen, Round, flexible red blood cells flow easily through your bloodstream and pick up oxygen in your lungs. In tiny air sacs in the lungs, called alveoli, oxygen moves into the blood and attaches to the hemoglobin in red blood cells. Then, the red blood cells deliver oxygen to cells throughout the body. In sickle cell anemia, there is a problem with your hemoglobin that makes your red blood cells sickle-shaped instead of round.