September is Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month: ASH Celebrates Progress, Calls for More Research

SCD is a chronic blood disorder affecting between 90,000 and 100,000 Americans. Instead of producing healthy red blood cells, individuals with the disease produce abnormal, sickle-shaped cells that cannot easily move through blood vessels and deliver adequate oxygen to the body’s tissues and organs. Blocked blood flow as a result of an accumulation of these sickled cells can cause severe pain and organ damage and increase a patient’s risk for infection.

While SCD was formerly considered a childhood disease because patients rarely lived beyond their teens, thanks to improvements in treatment, an increasing number of SCD patients are living well into adulthood. While effective treatments are extending life expectancy for these patients, doctors and patients face new challenges to help ensure that the growing adult population of patients with SCD can receive adequate care to manage their disease over the long term.

As hematologists and other health-care professionals continue to learn more about SCD, new tools, such as new patient-care recommendations recently released by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and endorsed by ASH, can better inform current treatment strategies. While the new clinical recommendations highlight important advances made by hematologists and others in recent years, they more importantly serve as a call for more research.

ASH is committed to working with Congress, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NHLBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other federal agencies to strengthen support for SCD research that will help researchers develop better treatments – and hopefully one day a cure – for this debilitating disease.

Covering Sickle Cell Disease This September? ASH Can Help.
ASH is making several sickle cell disease experts available for your coverage during Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month; please contact Amanda Szabo at [email protected] or at 202-552-4914 to arrange for an interview.

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