Ming Dao Research on Sickle Cells
September 7, 2018
One of the most common complications of sickle-cell disease occurs when deformed red blood cells clump together, blocking tiny blood vessels and causing severe pain and swelling in the affected body parts.
A new study from MIT sheds light on how these events, known as vaso-occlusive pain crises, arise. The findings also represent a step toward being able to predict when such a crisis might occur.
“These painful crises are very much unpredictable. In a sense, we understand why they happen, but we don’t have a good way to predict them yet,” says Ming Dao, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and one of the senior authors of the study.
