The only thing that should be noted in a normal baby is that it should be thoroughly checked after birth for thalassemia. A child with mild thalassemia may or may not be anemic and have a small impact on health. Moderate is more variable and may present as mild with no symptoms other than anemia, or it may tend to be severe, requiring blood transfusions, splenomegaly, hemolysis and infection. Thalassemia is characterized by a defect in the pearl protein gene, which reduces or prevents the synthesis of one or more of the pearl protein peptide chains in hemoglobin, resulting in a change in the composition of hemoglobin. The clinical symptoms of this disease vary in severity, and most of them can be manifested as chronic progressive hemolysis, which can be generally treated with vitamin and folic acid supplementation and also with iron depleting agents.