Active clinical trials for "Anemia, Sickle Cell"

Sickle cell anemia and sickle cell thalassemia are frequent diseases among the israeli arab population. The purpose of this study is to assess the clinical characteristics of the patients in one arab village and the laboratory characteristics in the carriers of this gene based in the screening for pregnant women that is carried out in the population of northern Israel. The results can be useful in order to institute universal screening for sickle cell anemia in northern Israel.

Iron overload is well study in Thalassemia patients and it's not only related to blood transfusions, since intestinal iron absorption is also increased in those patients. Sickle cell patients didn't developed significant clinical symptoms and signs of iron overload in spite frequent transfusions. The purpose of this study is to assess the iron overload in Sickle cell anemia and Sickle cell Thalassemia patients using clinical parameters and laboratory studies including Non Transferrin Binding Iron, Labile Iron and Hepcidin, in order to determine the cardiac and liver iron.

This pilot research is aimed to assess the needs of patients and health workers involved in Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) management in Nigeria. To achieve this, a questionnaire will be administered to SCD patients or parents of children affected by SCD. Another questionnaire will be administered to doctors and nurses working with SCD patients. A focus group discussion with patients/parents willing to participate will be also scheduled. Participants from the following centres will be involved: Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital Kaduna State University, Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria, National Hospital Abuja, Federal Medical Centre Katsina. Data will be qualitatively and quantitatively analysed and presented as aggregated data. Consent from all the study participants will be sought. Questionnaires will be coded and no personal data will be disclosed to authorised third parties.

The research proposed is a pilot study of pediatric and adolescent/young adult patients who have received the curative intervention (MSD-SCT), disease-modifying interventions (HU or CT) or SCC (control), with respect to three clinically important outcomes: quality-of-life (QOL), neurocognitive function, and reproductive potential. Comparable cohorts will be identified for each of the groups, drawing from patients treated by the SCD program of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA). QOL measures and neuropsychiatric testing and will be administered. Reproductive endocrine function markers (laboratory studies and pubertal staging), will be collected and analyzed. A tracking system of such patients will also be developed, gathering available retrospective data and setting up a mechanism for collection of new data.

Parvovirus B19 is a small virus that is the cause of "fifth" disease, a common infection in childhood. In people with sickle cell disease (SCD), parvovirus B19 infection causes the bone marrow to stop producing red blood cells temporarily, which can be life-threatening. A novel vaccine is currently in development for children with SCD. This study is the first step within a larger parvovirus B19 multi-institutional project that will help develop this new vaccine, as it will define the value and utility of using a novel assay for measurement of parvovirus-specific antibodies. The main objective is to investigate the relationship between the newly developed VP1u ELISA assay and the gold standard neutralization assay for parvovirus B19 infection. The most accurate test, called a neutralizing antibody assay, to see if a person has had or currently has the infection is very complex and expensive and would be very difficult to use in a large research study to test the new vaccine. A new and simpler test has developed. The main goal of this study, iSCREEN, is to find out if this new test works. There will be distinct labs performing the VP1u ELISA and the neutralization assays and the respective laboratories will not have access to each other's results for individual subjects. The VP1u ELISA will be performed at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Neutralization assays will be conducted at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate patients with pulmonary hypertension and sickle cell disease who have had multiple echocardiograms. Previous studies have shown that an elevated tricuspid jet (TR) regurgitant velocity on echo in this population is a predictor of mortality. This initial data only examined an isolated TR jet velocity. It was presumed that the mortality was related to pulmonary hypertension. It is the aim of this study to retrospectively evaluate patients who have had multiple echocardiograms and to determine if patients who had either a normalization of their TR jet velocity on a subsequent echo or had no evidence of pulmonary hypertension on right heart catheterization had a similar mortality rate to those with persistently elevated TR jet velocity.

This study is a retrospective chart review of sickle cell patients and will include patients whom have received blood transfusions and those whom have not. Of the transfused patients, it will also include those whom have received chelation therapy and those whom have not.

Cognitive impairment is a poorly understood, serious, and emerging complication for adult patients with sickle cell disease. Because there is extensive microvascular damage from oxidative damage in sickle cell disease, the investigators hypothesize that this is also present in the cerebral microvasculature to cause cognitive impairment. The investigators plan to test this by correlating markers of inflammation and oxidative damage with cognitive performance and 7 Tesla brain MRI microvascular findings in these patients, with the long term goal of understanding the mechanisms and risk factors of cognitive impairment in sickle cell disease.

A preliminary study was conducted involving 88 three-year-old children with sickle cell disease (SCD) who were followed at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Sickle Cell Center. They were offered developmental screening with the Brigance Preschool Screen-II test during their regular clinic visits from January 2006 to August 2008. Data from this work showed that 50% of 3 year old children with SCD had low developmental screening scores. In addition, the low scores were found to be associated with less parental education and with speech deficits. However they were not associated with sickle cell genotype and hemoglobin level. The primary goal of this study is to prospectively administer Brigance Preschool Screen -II to 3 year old children with SCD and 3 year old children without SCD who come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds and compare the results between the two groups.

In this research study, we are using heart imaging exams and blood testing, in order to gain an improved understanding of the pulmonary (lung) hypertension and cardiovascular (heart) complications that often occur in sickle cell patients. Information gathered from the healthy volunteers that participate in this study will be compared to information from the sickle cell patients in this study in order to help further our understanding.