Breakthrough in Treating Haemophilia! Gene Therapy Could End This Horrible Condition

in health •  7 years ago 


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A Blood Clot

Imagine your blood wouldn't clot. You could bleed out from a small wound. That's the hell haemophiliacs live with all the time. They are missing the one gene that tells blood to clot. Now, however, there's been a breakthrough in gene therapy that may help people with this horrible condition to lead normal lives!

  • What is Gene Therapy?

Sometimes an error occurs in the gene code of a person. Gene therapy aims to correct that error by replacing or modifying the faulty gene.

At the moment haemophiliacs need to inject themselves with a blood-clotting agent every other day to avoid bleeding out and to make sure they don't have a fatal internal bleed.

A trial has been conducted in the UK to insert the missing clotting gene into the gene code of 13 men who suffered severely with haemophilia. It was 100% successful! All of them now have blood that clots and don't need injection anymore!

My question is that can ex-haemophiliacs who've had gene therapy to correct it still pass on the condition to their children if the child was conceived after the therapy?

The gene therapy is very expensive at present so come on the likes of Richard Branson and Alan Sugar, how about sending the researchers a donation. If I can do it from my little income, I'm sure you can too.

Thank you for reading!

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