Anemia

What is Anemia and What Causes Anemia?

Anemia occurs when blood does not have enough red blood cells or when the blood does not have enough hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the oxygen-carrying pigment found in red blood cells. Anemia can be life-threatening. It is a condition that develops when your blood lacks enough healthy red blood cells. These cells are the main transporters of oxygen to organs.

If red blood cells are also deficient in hemoglobin, then your body isn’t getting enough iron. Anemia occurs when your blood doesn’t have enough hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is a protein in your red blood cells that carries oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body.

A common cause of anemia is not having enough iron. Blood is actually a liquid made up of several different cell types. One of the most important and most numerous cell types is the red blood cell. The purpose of the red blood cell is to deliver oxygen to the body. Anemia describes the condition in which the number of red blood cells in your blood is low. For this reason, doctors sometimes describe someone with anemia as having a low blood count. A person who has anemia is called anemic.

RBCs are disc-shaped and look like doughnuts without a hole in the center. They are produced continually in the spongy marrow inside the large bones of the body and normally last 120 days. RBC main role is to carry oxygen, but they also remove carbon dioxide (a waste product) from cells and carry it to the lungs to be exhaled. White blood cells and platelets are the two other kinds of blood cells. White blood cells help fight infections.

What causes anemia?
The individual causes of anemia are numerous, but most can be grouped within three major mechanisms that produce anemia: blood loss (excessive bleeding), inadequate production of red blood cells, or excessive destruction of red blood cells. Anemia may be caused by excessive bleeding. Bleeding may be sudden, as may occur in an accident or during surgery. Often, bleeding is gradual and repetitive, typically from abnormalities in the digestive or urinary tract.

Blood loss: excessive bleeding such as hemorrhages or abnormal menstrual bleeding

Chronic illness secondary to refractory anemia: inflammatory GI/GU diseases, malignancies (cancer), arthritis, kidney or liver failure, and acute and chronic infections

Cancer therapy: surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and/or immunotherapy

Infiltration (replacement) of bone marrow with cancer

Hemolysis: Breakdown or destruction of red blood cells

Decreased red cell production due to low levels of erythropoietin

Higher than normal rates of RBC destruction can be the result of inherited blood disorders like sickle cell anemia, and certain enzyme deficiencies. These disorders create abnormalities in the RBCs that cause them to die off in a shorter period of time than healthy RBCs. In people with hemolytic anemia, the immune system mistakenly attacks RBCs.

Decreased red cell production by the bone marrow
Pregnant women are at an increased risk of iron deficiency anemia because their iron stores have to serve the increased blood volume of the mother as well as be a source of hemoglobin for the growing fetus.

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