To the Editor: The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Her-rick's original case description of what is now known as sickle cell anemia (1). Additional case reports followed in 1911 and 1915; in 1922, Mason de-scribed a fourth case and coined the term sickle cell anemia (2). In 1949, Pauling et al. published an important study that identifi ed differences in the electrophoretic mobilities of normal and sickled erythrocytes (3). The in-heritance pattern of sickle cell anemia was determined in 1949; in 1957, In-gram identifi ed the single amino acid change in hemoglobin S (4).Patients with sickle cell anemia are at markedly increased risk for infections with several bacteria, in-cluding Streptococcus pneumoniae, and emerging viral infections such as pandemic in. uenza. We report a ret-rospectively identifi ed case of fatal bacterial pneumonia complicated by abundant erythrocyte sickling in a pa-tient bearing the sickle cell trait. The patient's illness occurred in July 1918, representing one of the fi rst identifi ed symptomatic cases of sickle cell trait
展开▼
