Alan Forsythe, a middle-aged college professor from Boston, is in the Swiss Alps studying astronomy during his sabbatical leave. He has been there for two days and plans to stay the entire year. However, he notices that he is short of breath when he walks up steps and tires easily with any physical activity. His symptoms gradually disappear, and he feels fine after less than a month. Upon returning to the United States, he has a complete physical exam and is told that his erythrocyte count is higher than normal. a. Attempt to explain this finding. b. Will his RBC count remain at this higher-than-normal level? Why or why not?

Video transcript

Welcome back, everyone. Here's our next problem. The inherited blood disorder that hinders the red blood cells from traveling through the blood vessels freely due to their abnormal crescent shape. It is called a sickle cell disease. B thalassemia C autoimmune hemolytic anemia or d hereditary spherocytosis. Well, we've got a pretty big clue in our problem that tells us this blood cells can't travel freely due to their abnormal crescent shape. And our disease is choice a sickle cell disease, which is where it gets its name sickle cell due to the crescent shape of those blood cells. So, sickle cell disease is an inherited disorder and the abnormal shapes of these blood cells hinders them from traveling freely causing the painful symptoms of the disease. Let's look at our other answer. Choices. Uh Choice B thalassemia is another inherited blood disorder. Um It causes an abnormal and reduced production of hemoglobin due to a mutation in the hemoglobin gene. So, thalassemia is similar in being an inherited blood disorder. Uh but no, doesn't cause the specific crescent shaped cells preventing them from moving through. It causes anemia as a result of this abnormal hemoglobin. Then choice c autoimmune hemolytic anemia. We can recognize that hemolytic uh term as meaning that the blood cells are destroyed and autoimmune, meaning the immune system attacks itself. In this case, attacks and destroys the body's own red blood cells. So that's different again from the sickle shaped blood cells causing problems in sickle cell disease. So the choice c is not our answer. And finally, hereditary spherocytosis, another inherited genetic disorder, but it produces spherical shaped blood cells that are more prone to rupture which causes anemia. So again, the answer we're looking for for the inherited blood disorder that hinders the blood cells from traveling freely due to their abnormal crescent shape is choice a sickle cell disease. See you in the next video.