March is Hemophilia Awareness Month, so here’s a quick video that explains the condition:

To correct the end of the video, some patients do better with human blood-plasma derived clotting factor and others do better with synthetic recombinants. In some cases it is due to developing an immune response to one or the other and in other cases it might just be that one works better for a certain patient. In a presentation I saw on the topic, the speaker pointed out that out of her three sons one did best on recombinants, one did best on Grifols clotting factor, while another did best with Talecris clotting factor (now part of Grifols).

Hemophilia patients require a lot of medication to keep healthy and to clot normally, in severe cases they can require injections as often as every other day and the higher dose medications can take up to 11 units of plasma to produce one dose (for plasma derived factor). Treatment costs can also easily top $1 million per year, so this is one group that will benefit of the Affordable Care Act. If you want to help, join your local Hemophilia walk or consider donating plasma at your local donor center.