How do female hemophiliacs deal with menstration? Are there any special clotting pills, or something? Perhaps it is not really bleeding since tissue is being shed, but still…the blood IS coming from somewhere…can they stop?
- Jinx
How do female hemophiliacs deal with menstration? Are there any special clotting pills, or something? Perhaps it is not really bleeding since tissue is being shed, but still…the blood IS coming from somewhere…can they stop?
AFAIK, hemophiliacs are exclusively male, since the problem is carried on the X chromosome, and females have a backup copy. Males don’t, so if they’ve got the bad gene, they’re stuck with it.
Yes, generally speaking, if you’re female and have a blood clotting disorder, you need to keep an eye on your monthlies.
http://www.womens-health.org/resstat/nhf.htm
http://www.hemophilia.ca/english/women/
A lot depends on what type of hemophilia you have (I think there are 14 variations).
Ah, I didn’t see Payne’s post. From the Canadian Hemophilia Society link.
According to the book Queen Victoria’s Gene: Hemophilia and the Royal Family by the Potts brothers, there have only been about three recorded cases of females having hemophilia-both died at the age of menstruation. But they were the product of cousins marrying.
The only way for a female to have hemophilia would be if her father was a hemophiliac and her mother a hemophiliac carrier.
from Stedman’s Concise Medical Dictionary
I have to wonder if there could be any remote link between hemophilia and endomitriosis…
with the new treatments for hemophilia it is possible for a female hemophiliac to get past menstruation age now. also with more male hemophiliacs living( through better medicine) it is a bit easier for them to get married and possibly meet up with a woman who could be a carrier.
aids has gone through the hemophiliac population like wild fire. a coworker has 3 nephews that have hemophilia, all are hiv positive as well.
This sounds suspicious to me… If I’m remembering my high school biology correctly, the hemophilia rate in women should be about equal to the square of the rate in men. In other words, if one man in a thousand has hemophilia, then about one woman in a million will have it. Two or three cases in women, ever, would imply a rate in women of one in a few billion, which would mean only one in about fifty thousand, in men, and I’m pretty sure that the rate’s higher than that.
Could you explain how you came up with those numbers? I didn’t learn anything in high school or college bio that would allow me to make such calculations, but I did learn that up until very recently hemophiliacs almost never survived childhood. As a female hemophiliac would need both a carrier mother and a hemophiliac problem, they would be very rare indeed if so few hemophiliac males died before reaching reproductive age.
The most common congenital cause of hypermenorrhea is a bleeding disorder similar to hemophilia called von Willebrand’s disease. Vaginal bleeding may occur between menses, and menstrual abnormaliies may be intermittent, moderate, severe or persistent. Some women who have hysterectomy for hypermenorrhea probably have mild undiagnosed vWD. These women are obviously at increased risk for post partum hemorrhage.
The cause of endometriosis is not known. One attractive theory states at the time of menstruation, viable endometrial cells are shed and pass retrograde through the uterine tubes, implanting in the pelvic cavity. This theory is easy to understand, and some degree of retrograde menstruation normally occurs in women with patent tubes. It explains the most common locations of endometriosis, however does not explain rare cases in the lung or brain, or endometriosis in women with Turner’s who do not menstruate. Furthermore, it does not explain why all women do not get endometriosis. However, if this is true you would expect a higher rate of endometriosis in hemophiliacs.
Sort of a tangent question…
I know that the few females with hemophilia have died ta the onset of menstruation, but does that make sense? Should menstruation be affected by hemophelia? When you get your period, you’re not really bleeding from a cut, but rather it’s the uterus lining taking the form of blood each month. Or does hemophilia just affect all kind of bleeding?
Hemophilia affects all types of bleeding. Even spontaneous bleeding into joints for no good reason is sometimes seen.
Dr_Pap, MD.