Question About Sickle Cell Anaemia

Thankyou for your replies. I also wondered about all their children but I've not heard anything about them having it.

It is like all genetic inheritance, we inherit roughly half our genes from each parent and it is the equivalent to the throw of a dice what we inherit from each parent at each conception.

In my father's family there is a gene that results in the person with it not going grey until their 70s. I have inherited the gene - my younger sister hasn't. Some of my cousins have it, others don't.

It will be the same with illnesses like sickle cell disease. The gene is on one side of the family, some children wll inherit it, some will not. As it is random, none or all of the children may inherit it.

Think a child has a one in four chance of having the recessive gene from both parents. Cystic fibrosis inheritance workd the same way.

People with sickle cell trait (SCT) inherit one sickle cell gene and one normal gene.
People with SCT usually do not have any of the symptoms of sickle cell disease (SCD), but they can pass the trait on to their children.