FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

FOCUS ON RESEARCH Previous Volume 353:2743-2745 December 29, 2005 Number 26 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text PDF PDA Full Text Purchase this article Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited E-mail When Letters Appear Related Article by The Optimizing Primary Stroke Prevention in Sickle Cell Anemia (STOP 2) Trial Investigators PubMed Citation

In the late 1930s, William Bosworth Castle and his colleague Thomas Hale Ham were studying blood samples obtained from patients with sickle cell anemia and found that the viscosity of the blood increased dramatically as its oxygen content decreased. As Castle later reflected, "It immediately occurred to us that this was because the elongated, sickled red cells had become tangled up `like haywire.'"¹ Castle and Ham went on to hypothesize about the pathophysiology of organ damage in sickle cell anemia in a way that still drives much of our thinking today: "a vicious cycle of erythrostasis may be set up . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Source Information

Dr. Platt is chief of the Department of Laboratory Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston and master of the William B. Castle Society at Harvard Medical School — both in Boston.

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Nur, E., Kim, Y.-S., Truijen, J., van Beers, E. J., Davis, S. C. A. T., Brandjes, D. P., Biemond, B. J., van Lieshout, J. J. (2009). Cerebrovascular reserve capacity is impaired in patients with sickle cell disease. Blood 114: 3473-3478 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Amlie-Lefond, C., Bernard, T. J., Sebire, G., Friedman, N. R., Heyer, G. L., Lerner, N. B., deVeber, G., Fullerton, H. J., for the International Pediatric Stroke Study Group, (2009). Predictors of Cerebral Arteriopathy in Children With Arterial Ischemic Stroke: Results of the International Pediatric Stroke Study. Circulation 119: 1417-1423 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Adams, R. J. (2007). Big Strokes in Small Persons. Arch Neurol 64: 1567-1574 [Abstract] [Full Text]