Sickle cell disease is a disease that can be life threatening and affects 1 in every 500 African Americans. In the United States the life expectancy of person with sickle cell is 50. Once diagnosed with sickle cell and learning the facts and statistics about the disease can be scary.

Sickle cell causes red blood cells to become crescent-shaped, like a sickle, hence the name. The distorted cells cannot adequately distribute oxygen throughout the body which can in result in chronic pain, organ failure and death.

There may be hope for individuals suffering from the debilitating disease. Doctors in Chicago believe they may have a cure to this once incurable disease. Of the patients they have performed the procedure on, 80 percent of them have been cured of sickle cell. This new procedure is less strenuous and require the stem cells of a sibling. The sibling’s cells are transfused with the patient’s and begin to take over and create healthy cells. They have ran trials on 20 patients, 80% are disease free. Soon they will begin using this method with patient who do not have a sibling donor match.