Part 1:
Hey there! In case you didn’t know, I’m a rare genetic disorder called haemophilia, or hemophilia. If I need to be more exact, I’m hemophilia B. I appear when my owner’s ability to make blood clots is impaired. 13 proteins are needed in total to make blood clots, and even if one is missing, the difference is day and night. Hemophilia is when one of the proteins are missing. Blood clots are essential to heal wounds. Blood clotting, or coagulation is when blood turns into more of a gel, stopping the cut or a blown vessel. That process needs to happen as soon as possible, or else the owner risks anemia. So as you could have figured out, blood clots are super important. But I take that ability away.
There are two types of hemophilia diseases. There’s hemophilia A, also known as factor VIII deficiency, and hemophilia B, also known as factor IX deficiency or if you want to get in the holiday spirits, Christmas disease. Factors VIII (8) and IX (9) are both clotting proteins. More exactly, the genes F8 for hemophilia A and F9 for hemophilia B are defected, resulting in non-production of proteins factor VIII and IX. So if you have either type of hemophilia, your genes that make the proteins are defected so you don’t have one of the clotting proteins needed to stop bleeding ASAP. According to statistics, hemophilia B is four times less common than hemophilia A and most people with hemophilia have severe effects.
I’m transferred from generation to generation by the X sex chromosome, so only a female can pass it down to their offspring. Boys and girls can both get hemophilia, but it’s more rare in girls. Instead, most girls are what you call a “carrier”, where she has the hemophilia sex chromosome, and can pass it down to their children, but they are not affected by the disease itself. The most common example of a carrier is Queen Victoria. Her many children ended up intertwining with several other empires, while some of the children either had hemophilia or were carriers. You could relate to this being the reason hemophilia is also called “The Royal Disease”. But still, the girls are no fun. They rarely get affected by me.
There are three severity levels for both types; mild, moderate, and severe. When the percentage of each factor decreases to a certain range, the severity changes. When a factor ranges from 6-49%, it’s mild hemophilia, which is boring to watch. When it ranges from 1-5%, then it’s moderate. This is when it starts getting fun. When you have less than 1% in your blood, then we get severe. Bleeding doesn’t seem to stop, especially in the joints. This moment is the priceless one, seeing the owner weep and freak out about the bleeding not stopping. This is when they start praying to stay alive because they know that when they lose more than two-fifth of their total blood, they’ll most likely die on the spot. They-. Sorry, I have to move along. There’s this boy who’ll be born and he got his mom’s hemophilia B gene. I’ll be right back after occupying that body.
Oh, that baby was so cute. But the face on the mom when the doctor said baby Joe had hemophilia B! That’s the real reason I live! But there might be a day when I become a disease into history like the famous smallpox, polio, and malaria. Medical scientists, being the annoyingly persistent people they are, have been working nonstop to find a way to stop me. They’ve made so much stuff to heal the people that have the honour of having me in their gene. I really don’t understand why. They’ve made ointment like material and products that replace the defected clotting factor, plasma or recombinant. What they do is they get the product that replaces factors VIII or IX and they slowly drip or inject it into the owner’s body. Luckily, this isn’t all that perfect, so I’m not going to disappear yet. However, the approximately 400,000 people with me in them aren’t going to want to stop just yet. I really hope they give up sooner or later, because it’s just been over 50 years since most of the info about me has been discovered. I’m too young to die! But anyhow, humans won’t stop, and there’s no such thing as immortality, so I guess one day I will be eliminated from this world. But not before a fight. You who’s reading this, I would be careful if I were you. Make sure you don’t have a kid with someone who has hemophilia. It’s going to make your life a lot harder.
Just two more things I want to tell you before I run off. Okay, that was horrible. I don’t have legs. But whatever, the first thing I want to tell you about is this weird outsider called hemophilia C. It’s an even rarer type of hemophilia where the gene F11 is defected, resulting the non-production of factor XI (11). But the weird thing about this disease is that there’s no range of severity per deficiency. For example, say Bob has hemophilia A and his factor VIII is corrupted. When he bleeds, it might almost never stop. On the other hand, if Obadiah has hemophilia C and his factor XI is basically destroyed to pieces, he would have almost identical symptoms as Larry who’s factor XI is just barely wrecked. This fact makes it harder for scientists to handle hemophilia C than A or B. I knew I should have been born as hemophilia C! I could have a longer lifetime!
But I can’t think about that right now, I have to be quick on this. So the last thing I want to tell you is that there is another type of hemophilia! I know, right?! But the weird thing is that this hemophilia, named acquired hemophilia, has nothing to do with a genetic mutation! The last three were all caused by a defect in the gene, but not this one. This weird boy is caused by the body making antibodies that are instructed to kill the factor VIII proteins! Freaky, huh? This is caused by a variety of reason, including but not limited to pregnancy, cancer and allergic reactions to drugs! And the best part is, half of the acquired hemophilia cases are unknown! I changed my mind, I should have been born as acquired hemophilia. Well, anyhow that’s all I have to share to y’all about what I am. Now if you’ll excuse me, my owner Chuck (no, not Chuck Norris) is going to fall off his bike and scrape his elbow. I need to make sure he bleeds for at least 30 minutes. So don’t you try to bother me at my job, okay? Ciao!
Part 2:
Ask: What is hemophilia? How is hemophilia treated? What are the effects of hemophilia? What is the history of hemophilia? What happens when you have hemophilia? What is hemophilia A? B? C? What causes hemophilia? What happens to the gene when you have hemophilia?
Acquire: I used a variety of resources, such as .org/.gov websites that specialized in hemophilia (we all know that Wikipedia can be risky), a couple books on hemophilia and a YouTube video which was my first time doing that for a project.
Analyze:
What is Hemophilia A? https://www.hemophilia.org/Bleeding-Disorders/Types-of-Bleeding-Disorders/Hemophilia-A
What is Hemophilia B? https://www.hemophilia.org/Bleeding-Disorders/Types-of-Bleeding-Disorders/Hemophilia-B
How is hemophilia treated? https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/hemophilia/treatment
What is hemophilia? http://www.hemophiliafed.org/bleeding-disorders/hemophilia/
What is hemophilia? Freedman, Jeri. Hemophilia. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 2007. Print.
What is the history of hemophilia? http://www.hemophilia.ca/en/bleeding-disorders/hemophilia-a-and-b/the-history-of-hemophilia/
What causes hemophilia? http://www.medicinenet.com/hemophilia/page2.htm
What is hemophilia C? http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/955690-overview
Hemophilia: the royal disease: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVHbMuBK8CI
What happens to the gene when you have hemophilia? https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/hemophilia#genes
Assess: I looked over my finished draft way too much. Never mind, there’s never such thing as looking over something too many times. Anyhow, I cruised on through, but after checking my rubric to make sure I was adding all the info I needed to make this an A project, I noticed that I barely had any info on the mutation. So I found another website that seemed to have all the info about the problems in the gene. But the only thing that worries me about the gene problems is that there aren’t many facts about the genetic mutation, and my teacher says you need many facts for a full mark. I hope he will realize. Anyway, moving on. When I was looking through the website for the gene problems, I found a totally new type of hemophilia called acquired hemophilia, and it was so freaky and cool that I had to put it in my project. Judging from what I can see, this is the best my project can be.