Concurrent sickle cell disease and diabetes mellitus.

In an attempt to test our hypothesis that a child with sickle cell disease who developed diabetes mellitus early enough, could pass through the various stages of life undetected due to the protection offered by the glycosylation of sickle Hb, we have searched for evidence of the co-existence of the two diseases in Nigerians. We were, however, unable to find any HbSS-diabetic. This study, therefore, shows the extremely low prevalence rate of diabetes mellitus in sickle-cell anaemia subjects, which makes it difficult for us to test our hypothesis.