NEED TO KNOW

• Ayla Garcia, a 36-year-old mother of four from Virginia, has died after contracting a Salmonella infection on a mission trip to Kenya
• Her illness was complicated by the fact that she had sickle cell disease
• "There are some goodbyes that leave you speechless, and this is one of them," a friend of Garcia's wrote in an emotional tribute following her death

A Virginia mother of four traveled overseas on a mission trip to help orphaned children.

A promising approach for the treatment of genetic diseases is called gene therapy. Gene therapy is a relatively new field of medicine that uses genetic material (mostly DNA) from the patient to treat his or her own disease. In gene therapy, the investigators introduce new genetic material in order to fix or replace a diseased gene, with the goal of curing the disease.

For a condition that affects millions worldwide, treatment progress for sickle cell disease (SCD) has been slow. In the United States alone, an estimated 100,000 people are living with the disease, which can shorten life expectancy by approximately 20 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most severe form, sickle cell anemia, is also a leading cause of stroke in children.

Abstract

Background: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is associated with significant complications, including nephropathy, which can progress to end-stage renal disease. While risks for SCD nephropathy have been identified globally, their specific prevalence and predictors in Nigerian, especially across age and clinical phenotypes, are less well understood. This study assessed the prevalence and predictors of nephropathy among Nigerian SCD patients.