BMJ 1994;308:1714 (25 June)

Letters

Services for people with haemoglobinopathy

EDITOR, - Sally Davies has expressed her concern, which I share, on the quality and quantity of services available to patients with sickle cell anaemia, as compared with those available to patients with other inherited disorders.1 I find it pertinent to note how much population genetics can affect public health.

With a heterozygote (AS) frequency of about 16% in the 885 000 black people in the United Kingdom, the predicted number of patients with homozygous sickle cell anaemia (SS) is 5834, based on the implicit assumption that intermarriage takes place only among black people.2 On the other hand, the AS heterozygote frequency in the population of England and Wales (49.9 million) is about 0.3%, and under the hypothesis of random mating the corresponding predicted number of SS patients would be 98. Thus, the prevalence of a recessive genetic disorder depends dramatically on breeding patterns.

The single change that could most . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Services for people with haemoglobinopathy
S Davies
BMJ 1994 308: 1051-1052. [Extract] [Full Text]

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