Secondary Prevention of Sickle Cell crises occur because of failure to use medication. As reported by the AP today. Ten years after government approval of the first sickle cell treatment, only a tiny fraction of patients use the drug — despite new research showing the disease is far more painful than doctors ever suspected.
Ignorance on the part of both physicians and patients is to blame for underuse of hydroxyurea, concludes an expert panel convened by the National Institutes of Health.
Worse, there's no other treatment in the pipeline for a disease that afflicts up to 100,000 Americans, most of them black — not only shortening their lives but causing regular pain.ttacks so severe that they frequently require long hospitalizations. "It's sort of amazing how ignored this disease is," says Dr. Sophie Lanzkron of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, which this month opened a special clinic to handle those pain crises that already has begun reducing ER visits. "The whole idea that the first genetic disease described to man has just one FDA-approved medication, it's just amazing."
Hydroxyurea, which costs "less than $100 a month," is the only FDA-approved treatment for the disease. It has been shown "to dramatically reduce sickle cell pain crises, hospitalizations, and some organ damage."
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