Why does sickle cell trait damage the kidney?
In: Biology
The sickle cell traits means that the carrier produces misshapen red blood cells, the oxygen carrying part of your blood. In your kidneys your blood is sent down a series of narrower and narrower tubes that serve to filter out unwanted things from your blood and keep in the good things. Imagine sending a stream of ping pong balls through a pipe, it works pretty well. Now imagine sending a stream of pencils through the same pipe. They’ll get caught and jammed up at every bend and turn.
The effect is that the narrow tubes in your kidneys get all clogged up with sickle cells when healthy red blood cells would pass normally. This means A. they aren’t as good at filtering the bad stuff out, B. keeping the good stuff in C. the pipes themselves need oxygen to survive too, the bad flow means they can start dying/getting even worse.
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