Hemophilia when was it discovered

His research managed to trace the origin of the disease to a female relative who lived in New Hampshire in The term hemophilia comes from a student of Zurich University, Friedrich Hopff and his professor, Dr. Argentinian physician, Alfredo Pavlovsky discovered there were two types of hemophilia A and B in The different factor deficiencies were distinguished in the s and s.

Until the early s, there was no way to store blood for hemophiliacs so they were generally given a transfusion from a family member if they had suffered a trauma. At this point, the life expectancy for boys with hemophilia was around 13 years old.

Some of the early treatments used for hemophilia included lime, bone marrow, oxygen, thyroid gland, hydrogen peroxide or gelatin. In the s, snake venom was used to help blood clotting. Hospital-based plasma transfusions were common treatments for hemophiliacs in the late s and continued until the s.

Hospitals then moved to fresh frozen plasma, although patients needed very large amounts for it to be successful and young boys often sustained crippling joint bleeds. By , the life expectancy of a person with severe hemophilia had risen to just under 20 years old. The fascinating story of this royal family is told in the book Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie the father of a son with hemophilia.

Hemophilia research has come a long way. Around , scientists found that human blood could be divided into groups or types. This made blood transfusions much more successful. In , scientists learned how to separate blood into its major parts, plasma and red cells.

In the early s, Dr. Judith Graham Pool discovered a process of freezing and thawing plasma to get a layer of factor-rich plasma cryoprecipitate. Cryoprecipitate was the best way of stopping hemophilia bleeds ever seen. The greatest breakthrough in hemophilia treatment, however, was the development of factor concentrates. Today, thanks to the support from patient organizations, such as the German Haemophilia Society, which was founded by Prof.

Rudolf Marx from Munich, haemophilia patients can be assured of good bleeding control using products with established efficacy and safety profiles. Work on improving factor concentrates continues, with efforts directed towards extending their half-lives using recombinant albumin-fused proteins and other modern technologies.