Can people with thalassemia drink milk?

Thalassemia is relatively rare and is also a congenital anemia disease. The most fundamental cause is the lack of globin chains in the body. With current medical technology, there is no clear way to treat this disease. It can only be treated slowly. Therefore, during pregnancy, you must pay attention to prenatal checkups to prevent this disease. Patients with thalassemia need to eat some nutritious foods, such as milk.

Thalassemia (hereinafter referred to as thalassemia) is a relatively rare congenital anemia disease. In my country, it is more common in the southern region. Patients with this symptom will have insufficient or even absent globin chains in their bodies, which will directly lead to mutations in the human hemoglobin structure, thereby affecting the normal oxygen-carrying capacity and causing damage to the liver, spleen and other functions.

There is currently no medical method to diagnose and treat this disease, so patients with severe thalassemia often die unfortunately in infancy, but the disease can still be effectively prevented. It is recommended that the couple first undergo relevant examinations, and only consider having children after excluding any family genetic diseases. This will effectively reduce the possibility of the next generation suffering from thalassemia.

As we all know, the globin chains in human blood require α, β, γ, and δ chains. Once the genes on these four chains are abnormal, it will hinder the production of globin chains and cause disease. The main cause of this disease is genetic abnormalities, some due to deletions and some due to mutations. At present, the more common thalassemia symptoms in the world mainly appear on α and β.

Generally speaking, as long as one of the parents is a mild thalassemia patient, or carries the thalassemia gene, the gene will be passed on to the next generation. If both parents carry the gene, the child will have two disease-causing genes.

Babies with mild thalassemia will not show any obvious abnormalities when they are born and are no different from other babies. However, as time goes by, the child will experience symptoms such as general weakness, anemia, and edema. Children with severe thalassemia will die shortly after birth, and some may even die in the womb. The two most common types of the disease are alpha thalassemia and beta thalassemia.