Sickle Cell Anemia: An Overview of its Inheritance Pattern, What inheritance pattern does sickle cell anemia follow?

Sickle Cell Anemia: An Overview of its Inheritance Pattern

Sickle cell anemia is an inherited blood disorder that is caused by an abnormal type of hemoglobin known as hemoglobin S (HbS) (Tsui, 2020). It is a genetic disorder, meaning that it is passed down from parents to their children. The inheritance pattern of sickle cell anemia follows an autosomal recessive pattern (Hazra et al., 2017). This means that for a person to have the disorder, they must have two copies of the abnormal hemoglobin gene, one from each parent. When both parents have one copy of the abnormal gene, they are known as carriers, however they will not show any symptoms of the disorder. If one parent is a carrier and the other has sickle cell anemia, then the child will have the disorder. If both parents are carriers, then the child has a 25 percent chance of having the disorder, a 50 percent chance of being a carrier, and a 25 percent chance of having neither (Almohanna et al., 2021). Cont…