Dental bone changes occurring in sickle-cell diseases and abnormal hemoglobin traits.

Since the discovery by Pauling and his co-workers of the abnormal hemoglobin associated with sickling of the erythrocytes (1), and by others of still different hemoglobin abnormalities, it has become possible to make a precise genetic diagnosis of a variety of congenital hemolytic disorders. By use of relatively simple technics of electrophoresis of hemoglobin, the presence of sickle hemoglobin (S), hemoglobin C (2), hemoglobin D (3), hemoglobin E (4), and hemoglobin G (5) can be detected and easily differentiated from the normal. Clinical experience with patients having these abnormal hemoglobins suggests that each responsible gene acts as a simple mendelian dominant and that each is probably allelic with the determinant for normal hemoglobin. In such circumstances one would expect that an individual might inherit any combination of two of these abnormal genes and that the clinical manifestations of such inheritance would be represented by a modified expression of each. Examples of some of the possible c...