Haemophilia

Haemophilia is a genetic disorder which prevents the blood from clotting due to lack of essential clotting factors. These clotting factors are proteins that interact with platelets in the blood to help form clots that plug lacerations. Problems that arise for sufferers of haemophilia are elongated periods of bleeding due to the inabilty to clot, but also haemorrhaging from much more minor injuries and in many cases of sufferers of haemophilia, bleeding can arise with no known cause. Haemophilia is an X-linked recessive condition, women carry the gene and pass it down the female line in the family, whereas males will have the condition becasue there is no homologous region on the Y chromosome to counteract the effect of the recessive gene . The gene for haemophilia runs in the British Royal Family, therefore the gene has been referred to as the 'royal disease'. There has been no cases of haemophilia before Queen Victoria's reign, so it is assumed that the gene mutation occurred in the sperm of Edward Augustus , the Queens mother. Many of Queen Victoria's decedents have suffered from haemophilia with the first case in 1853, Queen Victoria's forth son Prince Leopold.. One type of haemophilia, which is the most common, is haemophillia A. Haemophillia A is deficient in Factor VIII, an anti-clotting protein which is also known as AHF, anti-haemophillia factor. Moreover, the gene that causes haemophillia A is located at the X chromosome instead of Y chromosome.