Nigerian US-Based Physician Discovers Remedy for Sickle Cell
– Foundation lauds NSITF’s intervention
Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
Nigerian-born medical researcher based in United States of America, Dr. Sota Omoigui, has discovered a home oxygen therapy that is capable of reversing crisis associated with the dreaded sickle cell anemia.
The research breakthrough came just as the Judith Ojonugwa Sickle Cell Foundation has praised the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) effort of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund, (NSITF).
The Foundation, in a letter to the Managing Director of NSITF, Barrister Olúwaṣeun Faleye, expressed deep appreciation for the donations it received from the Fund.
While explaining his discovery, Omoigui who is the Medical Director, Division of Inflammation and Pain Medicine, Los Angeles Pain Clinic, Rosecrans Ave, Hawthorne, California in the United States said that home oxygen therapy administered within a half hour (30 minutes) of the onset of symptoms will prevent and stop a sickle cell crisis.
He said that earlier research findings showed that the early phase of a sickle cell crisis is reversible.
According to him, the reversible sickle cells can revert to their original flexible discoid shape when reoxygenated, but repeated sickling can damage the cell membrane and make it impossible for the cells to return to their normal shape, becoming irreversible sickle cells.
“However, multiple research articles have demonstrated that reversible sickle cells can be restored to their normal discoid shape if reoygenated before they progress to irreversible sickle cells.
“Oxygen therapy administered when patients are in a sickle cell crisis and admitted in the hospital does not stop a crisis.
“This is because patients are already in an irreversible sickle cell crisis; the cells have undergone cell damage and death and can no longer be resuscitated with oxygen.
Omoigui further said: “When you prevent or stop the crisis, early, you prevent severe pain, emergency care, hospitalization, the need for blood transfusions and multi-organ damage.
“It would significantly reduce the complications, disability and mortality rates linked to this chronic condition.
“It will reduce the cost of medical care as well as the economic costs of disability to the families, the community and the government.”
Omoigui explained that the most frequent occurrence of painful crisis is during sleep when there is a decrease in oxygen saturation adding that prevention of most episodes of sickle cell crisis, and organ damage, is rapidly achieved by administration of oxygen at bedtime or prior to sleep.
He said oxygen should be administered prior to sleep when one or more of these other triggers have occurred: daytime exertion, waking up earlier with a shortened duration of sleep, stress, fatigue, exercise, exposure to cold, ingestion of alcohol, airline travel, altitude of the location that exceeds 2000 ft, infection, malaria and joint pain.
“Supplemental oxygen must be available and mandated for airlines to provide for air travel as aircraft are pressurized to 8000 ft and that poses a danger of organ damage and death to passengers with sickle cell disease.
The physician said that home oxygen therapy should be considered as the standard of care and that public health policy should be directed to providing home oxygen therapy to all sickle cell patients.
“Adequate pain management of a crisis in a hospital with pure opioid medication such as morphine or pethidine is essential to quickly abort a crisis and prevent the progress to acute chest syndrome that has a 25 percent mortality”
Omoigui cautioned that drugs like Pentazocine or Tramadol should never be used to treat a crisis as they are ineffective and lead to complications.
“Oxygen should be administered by nasal canula at a rate of 1.5-2 liters / min delivered by an oxygen cylinder, home or portable oxygen concentrator.
“There is no other treatment that is widely available or comparable to home oxygen and its ability to rapidly transform the lives of these patients,” he said.
