When was anemia first discovered

By continuing to use our site, or clicking "Continue," you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy Continue. Twitter Facebook. This Issue. January 13, Todd L. Savitt, PhD ; Morton F. Goldberg, MD. Iron deficiency anemia historical perspective in the news. Blogs on Iron deficiency anemia historical perspective. Directions to Hospitals Treating Iron deficiency anemia.

Risk calculators and risk factors for Iron deficiency anemia historical perspective. Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M. Iron deficiency anemia was discovered in by Karl Vierordt and his student H. Over the next century, the details of iron regulation were elucidated.

Welcher discovered iron deficiency anemia. In , Finch and colleagues showed that reticulocytes precursors of red blood cells can incorporate iron from the plasma to make hemoglobin.

In , Bothwell published a monograph about early iron homeostasis. By this time, iron regulation was well understood. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer.

In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Hemoglobin has played a central role in the understanding of many biochemical and biophysical principles, as Eaton and colleagues point out on page of this issue of Nature Structural Biology. However, the role of hemoglobin in the understanding of genetic disease has been equally powerful. Over abnormal hemoglobins — such as sickle cell hemoglobin — have been discovered, most of which are either neutral or harmful to their carriers, and numerous thalassemias, which result from defective synthesis of one or more hemoglobin chains, have been identified.

Notably, sickle cell anemia was the first genetic disease to be examined at the molecular level. The first documented case of sickle cell anemia was published in by a physician named James Herrick. He described a 20 year old college student who was severely anemic. A smear of this patient's blood showed that "the shape of the red cells was very irregular, but what especially attracted attention was the large number of thin, elongated, sickle-shaped and crescent-shaped forms" 1. Complicating a diagnosis were additional problems: cardiac enlargement, jaundice, possible kidney damage, and swelling of the lymph nodes.

Nevertheless, Herrick suggested that some "change in the composition of the [red blood] corpuscle itself may be the determining factor" in the manifestation of these conditions. During the 's, evidence for the hereditary nature of sickle cell anemia developed and in , this disease caught the attention of Linus Pauling. He smiled, got up from his desk and opened a file drawer. Two years later, in , the famous Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Dr.

Linus Pauling and his colleague Dr. This led Dr. Today, thousands of such diseases are known but in , SCD was the first. The details of the abnormality were worked out by Dr.

Vernon Ingram in In the years following, better ways of treating sickle cell patients and potential treatments appeared.

The life span and the quality of life of patients were improved. Genetic counseling became an important tool for informing people about the risks of having a child with sickle cell disease. Today, years later, physicians and scientists continue to move forward in new understanding of the disease and new ways to treat it.