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Written By: Editorial Team | Updated : April 17, 2015 10:04 AM IST
Hemophilia is known as a bleeding disorder because in this disease, the blood doesn't clot due to lack of a clotting factor. It is hereditary in nature, meaning the disorder runs in the families. Hemophiliacs (people born with the disease) produce little or no clotting factor due to the presence of a defective gene in chromosome X.
Blood clotting here s what you need to know?
Clotting factors are proteins that play a key role in the normal clotting of the blood. When injured, these proteins along with platelets (present in blood) form a meshwork which in turn stops bleeding. However, in case of haemophilia, the lack of clotting factors lead to bleeding for a long time (either internally or externally). It can be life threatening as well. Here's what you should know about treatment of hemophilia.
Types of hemophilia how are they categorized?
Hemophilia is broadly divided into two types type A and type B haemophilia based on the deficiency of clotting factor.
Hemophilia understanding the genetic basis
Let's understand the genetic inheritance by understanding various scenarios:
1. If the father has haemophilia but the mother does not, the sons will not have haemophilia. However, all of the daughters will become carriers of the gene. This means that if a carrier female marries haemophiliac male, 50 % chance of their son becoming a haemophiliac. Whereas, their daughter will either be a haemophiliac or a carrier. (see picutre 3 for reference)
2. If the mother is a 'carrier' of the defective haemophilia gene but the father is healthy, there is a 50:50 chance of a son suffering from haemophilia or the daughter being a carrier.
3. If the father has haemophilia and the mother is a carrier, the woman will suffer from haemophilia too. However, this is very rare.
You may also like to read about a hemophiliac s journey to fatherhood (Real story)
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