Hemophilia A: When a normal person gets an injury and starts to bleed, a process begins within his body. As the body responds to the injury, a factor within the body is activated to clot the blood. This factor is factor, and when activated it sets off a whole chain of factors, which all activate each other one by one. When the final one is activated, the clot begins to form. Along this chain is a factor called factor 8, which is the factor that affects Hemophilia A. In Hemophilia A, the factor 8 is altered or absent. If the factor 8 is altered then this slows down the process, so clotting occurs much slower. The alteration in the factor occurs because one part of the makeup of the factor is changed, like an adenine is changed to a thymine. However, in a much more severe case, if the factor is absent, then the process cannot occur at all. Therefore, clotting cannot occur without treatment. This occurs when a whole part of the persons DNA is changed, such as a part being switched around. Mutation: A mutation can occur during meiosis when the child is being produced. This occurs when one of the genes from the mother is altered and becomes the recessive gene. The recessive gene is then transmitted to the male child. As in other genectic diseases, mutation is how the disease first started. |