April 4, 2016 – Hemophilia Treatment

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Anchor lead: New treatments are helping people with hemophilia live better, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Hemophilia is a blood clotting disorder that used to be a death sentence. After the blood clotting factors that were missing were identified, treatment became possible.  Now new factors are making living with the condition much easier.  That’s according to Clifford Takemoto, a hemophilia expert at Johns Hopkins.

Takemoto: In the past few years there’s been several new products available for treatment of bleeding in patients with hemophilia.  One of the problems or challenges in the treatment of hemophilia is you need to give the factor into the vein.  It might mean giving it every other day.  For small children it’s a challenge and now some of these factors last longer so it means you don’t have to do the IVs as frequently.  It’s a big improvement I think for peoples’ quality of life.  :24

Takemoto says both factor XIII and factor IX, the most common missing blood proteins, have a couple of options each for hemophilia management, although they are much more expensive than blood factors that don’t last as long.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.