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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1];Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief: Simrat Sarai, M.D. [2]

Overview

Hemophilia was first described by Dr. John Conrad Otto, a Philadelphia physician in 1803 who wrote an account about "a hemorrhagic disposition existing in certain families." He recognised that the disorder was hereditary and that it affected mostly males and rarely females.

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Hemophilia historical perspective On the Web

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American Roentgen Ray Society Images of Hemophilia historical perspective

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NICE Guidance

FDA on Hemophilia historical perspective

CDC on Hemophilia historical perspective

Hemophilia historical perspective in the news

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Directions to Hospitals Treating Psoriasis

Risk calculators and risk factors for Hemophilia historical perspective

Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [3]; Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief: Badria Munir M.B.B.S.[4]

Overview

Historical Perspective

Discovery

  • Hemophilia was first discovered by [name of scientist], a [nationality + occupation], in [year]/during/following [event].
  • Hippocrates was the first one who observed the blood of wounded soldier was coagulated as cooled which is traced back to 400 B.C.
  • Aristotle observed similar finding.
  • According to many European historians, the earliest written references which could be implictaed as haemophilia are described in Jewish writings of the 2nd century AD.
  • A ruling of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch exempts a woman's third son from being circumcised if his two elder brothers had died of bleeding after circumcision. Additionally,he had history of his three sons being died after circumcision


  • Hemophilia was first discovered by Al-Zahrawi-Albucaisi, a physcian, in 936-1013 AD.
  • His description corresponds with haemophilia.He described following points:
    • His terminology was indicative of the real cause of the disease.
    • He described inherited pattern of disease as it was in only one village.
    • He tried to find a former description of the disease in some ancient physicians, but we found nothing.
    • He noticed the limitation of the disease to males and their boys.
    • He characterized the disease with easy bleeding after minor traumas which is nowadays considered the primal symptom of the disease.
    • He admitted that he didn't know the cause of the disease which was impossible to be discovered in his time.
    • He recommended using the cauterization of the bleeding place until the vessels stop bleeding.
  • In 1803, an American physicain,Dr. John Conrad Otto, published an account about "a hemorrhagic disposition existing in certain families" in the "New York Medical Repository".
  • He recognized that the disorder was hereditary and it affected only males.
  • The disorder was transmitted by unaffected females to a proportion of their sons.
  • He was able to trace the disease back to a woman who settled near Plymouth, New Hampshire in 1720 AD. These accounts

began to define a clinical syndrome on which the 19th century developed an extensive literature.

  • The recent rather strange name 'haemophilia' which means 'love of blood' appeared in the title of Hopff's treatise of 1828 published at the University of Zurich.
  • In 1886, Sir Frederick Treves described the case haemophilia in the female from a first-cousin marriage.
  • In 1890, Konig describes the involvement of joints as the most characteristic symptom of

haemophilia.

  • The association between [important risk factor/cause] and [disease name] was made in/during [year/event].
  • In [year], [scientist] was the first to discover the association between [risk factor] and the development of [disease name].
  • In [year], [gene] mutations were first implicated in the pathogenesis of [disease name].

Outbreaks

There have been several outbreaks of [disease name], which are summarized below:

Landmark Events in the Development of Treatment Strategies

In [year], [diagnostic test/therapy] was developed by [scientist] to treat/diagnose [disease name].

Impact on Cultural History

Famous Cases

The following are a few famous cases of hemophilia:

The Royal Hemophilia:

  • In 19th and 20th centuries, Queen Victoria,passed the mutation to various royal houses through two of her five daughters (Princess Alice and Princess Beatrice), across the continent, including:
    • The royal families of Spain
    • Germany
    • Russia
  • Victoria's son Leopold suffered from the disease.
  • The spread of hemophilia in the royal families of Europe played a crucial role in the development of medical knowledge about the disease.
  • The condition was not reported among any of the Queen's antecedents, so that it was supposed that a mutation occurred at spermatogenesis in her father, Edward, Duke of Kent, a mischance perhaps made more likely by the fact that he was in his fifties when she was conceived.

Hemophilia in the British Royalty:

  • William Hewson Leopold was severely affected and suffered numerous bleeding episodes.
    • In 1868 the British Medical Journal noted a 'severe accidental haemorrhage' leading to 'extreme and dangerous exhaustion by the loss of blood' at the age of 15.
    • In 1884, at the age of 30, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage after hitting his head.
    • In 1907, his daughter, Alice, had a hemophilic son, Rupert, Viscount Trematon, who died at 21, also of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Haemophilia in the German and Russian Royalty:

  • Alice, Victoria's third child, passed it on to at least three of her children:
    • Prince Friedrich
    • Princess Irene
    • Princess Alix
    • Princess Victoria
  • Prince Friedrich Died before his third birthday of cerebral bleeding resulting from a fall.
  • Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine (later Princess Heinrich of Prussia), who passed it on to two of her three sons: ** Prince Waldemar of Prussia. Survived to age 56;had no issue.
    • Prince Heinrich of Prussia who died at age 4.
    • Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine.
  • Alix married Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and passed it on to her only son, Tsarevitch Alexei who was murdered by the

Bolsheviks at the age of 13.

  • Alexei's haemophilia was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of Imperial Russia during the Russian Revolution of 1917.
  • The illness of the Tsarevich cast its shadow over the whole of the concluding period of Tsar Nicholas II's reign and alone can explain it.
  • Without appearing to be, it was one of the main causes of his fall, for it made possible the phenomenon of Rasputin (1869-1016) and resulted in the fatal isolation of the sovereigns who lived in a world apart and wholly absorbed in a tragic anxiety which had to be concealed from all eyes.
  • Rasputin used hypnosis to relieve pain and/or slow hemorrhages, and sent away
  • It is not known whether any of Alexei's sisters were carriers, as all four were executed with him before any of them had issue.
  • One, Grand Duchess Maria, is thought by some to have been a symptomatic carrier, because she hemorrhaged during a

tonsillectomy.

  • Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, Alice's oldest child and maternal grandmother to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, might have inherited the mutation, though the gene remained hidden for several generations before reappearing in the descendants of her eldest granddaughter, Princess Margarita of Greece and Denmark.

Hemophilia in the Spanish Royalty:

  • Princess Beatrice, Victoria's ninth and last child, passed it on to at least two, if not three, of her children:
    • Princess Victoria Eugenie
    • Prince Leopold
    • Prince Maurice
  • Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg (later Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain), who passed it on to Infante Alfonso and Infante Gonzalo.
  • Infante Alfonso of Spain, Prince of Asturiaswho died at age 31, bleeding to death after a car accident whereas Infante Gonzalo who died at age 19, bleeding to death after a car accident.
  • Prince Leopold of Battenberg. Later Lord Leopold Mountbatten. Died at age 32 during a knee operation.
  • Prince Maurice of Battenberg who killed in action in World War I in 1914 at the age of 23.
  • Maurice's hemophilia is disputed by various sources. It seems unlikely that a known hemophiliac would be allowed to serve in combat.

Hemophilia in the Last Century:

  • It was Paul Oskar Morawitz (1879-1936) in 1905 who assembled coagulation factors into the scheme of coagulation and demonstrated that in the presence of Queen Victoria and her family.

References

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Historical Perspective

Scientific Discovery[1]

  • The first evidence of hemophilia is in the Talmud, Jewish holy text, which states that males did not have to be circumcised if two brothers had already died from the procedure.
  • In the 12th century, the Arab physician Albucasis wrote of a family whose males died of bleeding after minor injuries.
  • In 1803, Dr. John Conrad Otto, a Philadelphia physician, wrote an account about "a hemorrhagic disposition existing in certain families." He recognised that the disorder was hereditary and that it affected males and rarely females. He was able to trace the disease back to a woman who settled near Plymouth in 1720. His paper was the second paper to describe important characteristics of an X-linked genetic disorder (the first paper being a description of colour blindness by John Dalton who studied his own family).
  • The idea that affected males could pass the trait onto their unaffected daughters was not described until 1813 when John Hay published an account in The New England Journal of Medicine.
  • The first usage of the term "hemophilia" appears in a description of the condition written by Hopff at the University of Zurich in 1828.[2]
  • In 1937, Patek and Taylor, two doctors from Harvard, discovered anti-hemophilic globulin.
  • Pavlosky, a doctor from Buenos Aires, found Hemophilia A and Hemophilia B to be separate diseases by doing a lab test.
  • This test was done by transferring the blood of one hemophiliac to another hemophiliac. The fact that this corrected the clotting problem showed that there was more than one form of hemophilia.
  • In 1924, a Finnish doctor discovered a hereditary bleeding disorder similar to hemophilia localised in the "Åland Islands", southwest of Finland. This bleeding disorder is called "Von Willebrand Disease".

European Royalty

Queen Victoria passed hemophilia on to many of her descendants.

  • Hemophilia has featured prominently in European royalty and thus is sometimes known as 'the royal disease'. Queen Victoria passed the mutation for hemophilia B to her son Leopold and, through some of her daughters, to various royals across the continent, including the royal families of Spain, Germany and Russia. In Russia, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich son of Nicholas II, was a descendant of Queen Victoria through his mother Empress Alexandra and suffered from hemophilia.[3][4]
  • It was claimed that Rasputin was successful at treating Tsarevich Alexei's hemophilia. At the time, a common treatment administered by professional doctors was to use aspirin, which worsened rather than lessened the problem. It is believed that, by simply advising against the medical treatment, Rasputin could bring visible and significant improvement to the condition of Tsarevich Alexei.
  • In Spain, Queen Victoria's youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, had a daughter Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, who later became Queen of Spain. Two of her sons were hemophiliacs and both died from minor car accidents. Her eldest son, Prince Alfonso of Spain, Prince of Asturias, died at the age of 31 from internal bleeding after his car hit a telephone booth. Her youngest son, Infante Gonzalo, died at age 19 from abdominal bleeding following a minor car accident where he and his sister hit a wall while avoiding a cyclist. Neither appeared injured or sought immediate medical care and Gonzalo died two days later from internal bleeding.

Blood contamination issues

  • Ryan White was an American hemophiliac who became infected with HIV/AIDS through contaminated blood products.
  • Prior to 1985, there were no laws enacted within the U.S. to screen blood. As a result, many people with hemophilia who received untested and unscreened clotting factor prior to 1992 were at an extreme risk for contracting HIV and hepatitis C via these blood products. It is estimated that more than 50% of the haemophilia population, i.e. over 10,000 people, contracted HIV from the tainted blood supply in the United States alone.
  • As a direct result of the contamination of the blood supply in the late 1970s and early/mid-1980s with viruses such as hepatitis and HIV, new methods were developed in the production of clotting factor products. The initial response was to heat-treat (pasteurized) plasma-derived factor concentrate, followed by the development of monoclonal factor concentrates, which use a combination of heat treatment and affinity chromatography to inactivate any viral agents in the pooled plasma from which the factor concentrate is derived. The Lindsay Tribunal in Ireland investigated, among other things, the slow adoption of the new methods.

References

  1. "Hemophilia wikipedia".
  2. "The History of haemophilia". Retrieved 2007-06-27.
  3. Michael Price (8 October 2009). "Case Closed: Famous Royals Suffered From Hemophilia". ScienceNOW Daily News. AAAS. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
  4. Evgeny I. Rogaev; et al. (8 October 2009). "Genotype Analysis Identifies the Cause of the "Royal Disease"". Science. Retrieved 9 October 2009.

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