Sickle cell disease impedes blood flow to all organs including the ovaries and testicles. This means that patients with SCD are at increased risk for infertility. In addition, one of the mainstay drugs for treatment of SCD is Hydroxyurea. This also can cause infertility. This drug is sometimes started during infancy. Both bone marrow transplantation and gene editing that are used for “curing” SCD cause infertility.
So if a parent has a newborn with SCD, they are faced with deciding if they will try and help preserve that person’s fertility. This can mean freezing testicular tissue of infant sons and the eggs of the infant daughters. This involves risks, costs and ethical considerations.
If a patient with SCD has fertility issues later in life, their options may include in-vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic testing if they want to have a child without SCD (depending on the trait status of the partner).
And to prevent we are again talking about embryo formation. The chosen embryo, however, will not have SCD.