The Molecular Basis for the Treatment of Sickle Cell Crisis by Intravenous Urea.

The unexpected pathway to the creation of the HbA1c test and the discovery of AGE’s

“…At that time I was an Assistant Professor at the Rockefeller University trying without success to isolate erythropoietin from the urine of patients with aplastic anaemia. One of the participants, Alan Schecter, mentioned that there had been a recent report of the successful treatment for sickle cell anaemia crisis in patients with large amounts of urea [2]. The rationale that was given by the investigators was that urea would disrupt the polymerized haemoglobin S in the red cells that cause entrapment in capillaries and in turn cause severe pain and tissue damage.…”

Intravascular Sickling Associated with Diabetic Ketoacidosis

“…A recent report by Nalbandian and colleagues 4 indicates that intravenous urea therapy may make the recognition of an intravascular sickling phenomenon more than of academic interest.…”

An Automated Screening Method for the Specific Detection of Homozygous and Heterozygous S Hemoglobin

“…Nalbandian and co-workers have provided optical and electron microscopic evidence that urea in invert sugar (inhibits hemolysis) in fact does reverse efficiently sickling in S hemoglobin erytnrocytes. The pertinent literature on these aspects has been reviewed and recently published by us elsewhere (27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33). By the automated technique described above, the hemolysate of hemoglobin S was sickled (constituted a nematic liquid crystal system) in the Sickledex line.…”