Sickle Cell Anemia was first published in African medical literature in the 1870s. Savitt and Goldberg (1989) gave an account of investigations into the story of Walter Clement Noel, the first to be described case of sickle cell anemia. Noel, a first year dental student at the Chicago College of Dental Surgery, was admitted to the Presbyterian Hospital in the late 1904. Ernest Irons, a 27 year-old intern, performed routine physical, blood, and urine examinations. He noticed that Noel's blood smear contained many pear-shaped forms and alerted a physician, James Herrick, to the unusual blood findings. Herrick and Irons followed Noel over the next two and a half years through several episodes of severe illness as he continued his dental studies. Noel died nine years later at the age of 32. Herrick did not include Irons in the authorship, Savitt, T.L.; Goldberg, M.F.: Herrick's 1910 case report of sickle cell anemia. Testing for sickle cell anemia and its avenues are available through a blood test called "hemoglobin electrophoresis." Your doctor or local sickle cell foundation can do this test. During this test hemoglobin samples are identified by the way they act in an electric charge. Here, in the United States, most newborns are tested before they leave the hospital. Considering where the sickle mutation is found, chromosome 11, the location where the Beta chain of hemoglobin is coded is looked at and examined carefully. Unborn babies are often tested. The test is practiced by sampling tissue from the placenta; doctors can tell whether a fetus has sickle anemia or the sickle cell trait. This test can be done as early as the first trimester of pregnancy. .
There are different types of sickle cell disease. The main three found in the U.S. include:.
1. Hemoglobin SS or sickle cell anemia.
2. Hemoglobin SC disease.
3. Hemoglobin sickle beta-thalassemia.
Each of these can cause sickle pain episodes and complications.