1. What Really is Tay-Sachs
Disease?
By Aaron Husband
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2. What Is It?
• A rare genetic disorder that affects
nerve cells in the brain and spinal
• cord causing severe mental and
developmental retardation.
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3. Genetics
• Caused by a defect in a gene known as HEXA. Tay-
Sachs disease is an autosomal recessive genetic
disorder. This means that each parent of an affected
child is a carrier of one copy of the mutated gene,
although they do not exhibit any signs or symptoms.
If both parents are carriers of the mutated gene there
is 25% chance in each pregnancy that the child will
have Tay-Sachs disease.
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4. What Are Common
Symptoms?
• The most common time in life with symptoms
are the most noticeable are during childhood.
About 3 to 6 months parents will notice a
cherry-red spot in the child’s retina.
Characteristic symptoms of Tay-Sachs
disease include muscle weakness, loss of
muscle coordination and other problems with
movement, speech problems, and mental
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5. How Many Are Reported A
Year?
• Each year, about 16 cases of Tay-
Sachs are diagnosed in the United
States.
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7. Sickle Cell Anemia
By: Celia Tillman

8. W Is Sickle Cell Anem
hat ia?
Sickle cell anemia is a serious disease in which the body
makes sickle shaped red blood cells. “Sickle shaped” means
that the red blood cells are shaped like a "C. Normal red blood
cells are disc-shaped and look like doughnuts without holes in
the center. They move easily through your blood vessels. Red
blood cells contain the protein hemoglobin. This iron rich protein
gives blood its red color and carries oxygen from the lungs to
the rest of the body.Sickle cells contain abnormal hemoglobin
that causes the cells to have a sickle shape. Sickle-shaped cells
don’t move easily through your blood vessels. They’re stiff and
sticky and tend to form clumps and get stuck in the blood
vessels. The clumps of sickle cells block blood flow in the blood
vessels that lead to the limbs and organs. Blocked blood
vessels can cause pain, serious infections.

9. Sickle Cell Condition
Anemia is a condition in which your blood has a lower than normal
number of red blood cells. This condition also can occur if your red
blood cells don’t have enough hemoglobin.Red blood cells are made in
the spongy marrow inside the large bones of the body. Bone marrow is
always making new red blood cells to replace old ones. Normal red
blood cells last about 120 days in the bloodstream and then die.

10. How It Carries Through The Body
They carry oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from
your body.In sickle cell anemia, a lower than normal
number of red blood cells occurs because sickle cells
don’t last very long. Sickle cells usually die after only
about 10 to 20 days. The bone marrow can’t make new
red blood cells fast enough to replace the dying ones.

11. Patients with sickle cell anemia

12. The Normal Blood Cell And The
Sickle Cell Blood Cell

13. Video
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=LUSk8Lu3TKQ