“Danielle Jamison of Islandton, S.C. suffers from sickle cell anemia, a condition that causes pain so severe it used to send her to the hospital two or three times a year.
The episodes happened when misshaped blood cells clumped together inside vessels, blocking blood flow to organs and triggering crippling pain. In addition to the misery, those events cause permanent damage that often shortens the lives of the estimated 100,000 people afflicted with the disease, most of them African-Americans.
But two years ago, she began taking an experimental medication in a study led in part by a doctor and researcher at UAB. It’s one of two new drugs for sickle cell approved in November by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – the first new treatments to hit the market in three decades.”
View the whole story here: https://www.al.com/news/2020/01/alabama-research-leads-to-new-treatment-for-painful-illness.html