Lammi

Lammi

Hemophilia

Hemophilia is a blood disorder that is also genetic and affects the circulatory system. It is not contagious like a cold or flu. It is usually inherited, which means that it often runs in families. Hemophilia almost exclusively affects males. Hemo philia ca uses non-stop bleeding, due to the lack of clotting factor in the blood. It is generally passed from mother to son, except in rare cases. The bleeding from Hemophilia can be internal and cause bruising under the skin. Most treatments for Hemophilia are to add clotting factor to the person’s blood.  Being a genetic disease, hemophilia is caused by the genes that we inherit from our parents and there are two forms of the disease, hemophilia A and hemophilia B. Hemophilia A and Hemophilia B are caused by and inherited defect in a pair of chromosomes. The defects affect how much the clotting factor a person will produce and how the factor will function. It is caused by a defective gene that is unintentionally passed from mothers to son via the X chromosome or a mutation or random change occurs in the gene as it is passed to the child.

Hemophilia is generally passed on through the X gene in most cases. A woman carrier, without the disease, would pass there X chromosome to their offspring, while carrying the hemophilia gene. The hemophilia gene would be on the X chromosome and genes would pass on our parent’s characteristics onto us. So in this case the mother would pass the hemophilia gene onto the son and not the daughter because the daughter has another X chromosome from the father that counteracts the hemophilia gene, meanwhile the son has only one X chromosome. The female with one X chromosome would then become a carrier with the possibility of passing on the gene to her children, but if the female has two X chromosomes with hemophilia then she also has hemophilia. There aren’t many cases in which a female gets hemophilia because both of her parents would have to hemophilia. The symptoms of hemophilia are varied but ultimately consist of non-stop bleeding. The very first signs of hemophilia occur during birth and early childhood such as  bleeding into muscle, deep bruises after receiving shots, prolonged bleeding after male child is circumcised, and prolonged bleeding after the umbilical cord is cut. Yet the general symptoms would seem to be bleeding into joints or muscle causing pain and swelling, frequent nose bleeds and abnormal bleeding after injury or surgery, and blood found in urine and easy bruising. These symptoms of hemophilia can also cause other problems such as hemarthrosis. Hemarthrosis is the bleeding into joints which cause swelling and inflammation in the joint area. Also there can bleeding into the muscles which causes bruising, muscle hardness and pain, yet the worst side effect to hemophilia is Compartment Syndrome. Compartment Syndrome is when complications due to bleeding cause stress on arteries and nerves. This causes severe pain, weakness, and could result in paralysis. Now there are treatments for hemophilia which start from birth. In some cases donated blood products can be injected aiding the replacement of absent or abnormal clotting factor. Hemophilia is usually treated by replacing clotting factor and the different types of severity decide when this clotting factor is taken. Hemophilia care is taught and children began to administer the clotting factor to themselves as young as 10 years old. Those who have hemophilia learn to recognize all signs of their disease and to be careful of injury. The FDA, Food and Drug Association, has approved a new drug that would help people with Hemophilia. The usual treatment is to give the person clotting factor. This new formula for the clotting factor would allow the drug to be kept at room temperature. This makes it easier for small hospitals to keep the clotting drugs that they couldn’t before due to their lack of freezers. But there is a negative factor towards it. The clotting factor can only be kept for two years instead of three. All in all hemophilia can influence many of the body systems including the muscle, skeletal, and circulatory system and seems to be prevalent in males over females. __ Sources __ http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/hemophilia/hemophilia_signs.html http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000538.htm http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000539.htm www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/hemophilia/hemophilia_what.html - 15kghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition=hemophilia - 41k http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2008/NEW01833.html