Sickle cell anaemia therapy in 2025

Abstract

New pharmacological therapies for sickle cell anaemia have not been as efficacious as hoped, while widespread application of curative stem cell and gene therapies is not likely to occur soon. This situation raises the question about whether more attention now be devoted to the use of hydroxyurea in this disease.

Keywords: fetal haemoglobin; hydroxyurea; sickle cell anaemia; therapy.

FIGURE 1

A view of the pathophysiology of sickle cell disease at the molecular and cellular level. The upper half of the diagram illustrates the phenomena that I believe constitute the primary pathophysiological processes, while the lower half shows other factors which also contribute to disease manifestations, some of which are noted at the bottom of the figure (from Ref. [22]).