Help sickle cell disease people!

Sickle cell disease is a high mortality and morbidity disease being the most frequent genetic disease and very prevalent in black community. There is an estimative of 240,000 newborn ill every year in sub-Saharan Africa with 50-90% mortality before age of five. In Brazil, 3/1000 babies born with the disease also with high mortality and 100,000 black US citizens live with the disease. They suffer from jaundice, acute chest syndrome, severe painful crisis, infarcts, stroke and leg ulcers. There are only two FDA-approved drugs for treatment, but with some bad side effects. In collaboration with colleagues from others universities in Brazil, we developed a few number of molecule prototypes that can become new drugs for sickle cell disease treatment with excellent initial results in vitro. But we need to go further with research to make possible a new, low-cost, accessible and effective drug to this disease and to know more about hormones that help ameliorate patiente life.