Waking Up Genes

OCCASIONALLY, GREATNESS EMERGES FROM THE commonplace. Scientists have found that an ordinary food additive may help people who suffer from sickle-cell anemia, the inherited illness that afflicts up to 100,000 black Americans. A preliminary study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that butyrate, a widely used flavor enhancer, can overcome the basic cause of the disease. A genetic flaw leads the body to make abnormal hemoglobin, the blood protein that carries essential oxygen.

Six patients with either sickle-cell anemia or thalassemia, a related blood disorder, showed dramatic improvement after receiving butyrate injections for two to three weeks. Apparently the chemical reactivates a gene that produces a form of hemoglobin used by the baby in the womb but shuts down soon after birth. Turned on again, the gene directs the manufacture of enough fetal hemoglobin to compensate for the defective adult variety.