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Perhaps the most well-known disease related to plasma is hemophilia. An inherited change in one of the clotting proteins (called factor VIII) leaves it dysfunctional. This single change disrupts the entire sequence of chemical reactions necessary for clotting. As a result, people with hemophilia can suffer severe swelling, bruising and bleeding from simple day to day events that the rest of the population take for granted.
The child shown above has a severe swelling on the forehead from a bump to the head. This was caused by a failure of his clotting system to stop the bleeding from a bruise. Hemophilia can be controlled with the infusion of factor VIII collected from donated blood or plasma. |
