Hemophilia (hēməˈfilēə)
Click on the picture to watch the story of someone with Hemophilia!
![Picture](/uploads/2/3/9/2/23929852/9616959.png)
Cause
Symptoms
Inheritance
Incidence
Treatment
- Hemophilia is caused by a mutation in one of the clotting factors
- A clotting factor is part of a chain of proteins that cause clotting to be initiated by the little chunks of bone marrow in the bloodstream
Symptoms
- Someone with Hemophilia will bleed longer than someone without it
- The clots that form over a Hemophilia patient‘s cuts will sometimes fall of befor the skin under it has regrown itself
- Internal bleeding at the joints is probably the worst thing that can happen to a person with Hemophilia, because it may lead to painful arthritis at that joint.
Inheritance
- Most of the genes that have to do with blood clotting are in the X chromosome, so women rarely have it
- the severity of the symptoms can vary, if only one letter is wrong, then the symptoms may not even be noticeable, but if a entire section is backwards, then the person can get very severe symptoms.
Incidence
- Hemophilia is a sex-linked disorder
- It can affect any male with any ethnicity
- The chances of a male getting it are about 1 in 4,000
- Females have a lower chance of getting it because they have two X chromosomes
Treatment
- A person with Hemophilia will inject purified blood clotting factors into their bloodstream but, if the person’s immune system attacks the clotting factors, then extra treatment may be needed