Bleeding is painful. It’s not only painful, but probably worse, it’s also just a nuisance and a hassle. Lucky for most of us, pressure, a bandaid, or, at worst, a trip to the doctor’s office for stitches, usually does the trick.
For hemophilia A patients, the answer is not so simple.
Hemophilia A is a genetic disorder which originates from a defective or missing factor VIII, which is a clotting protein. As a result of this, hemophilia a patients tend to bleed for much longer than most people—this bleeding occurs both externally, like in the case of a cut, and internally, in joints and muscles.
For more about hemophilia A, click here.
I get impatient and aggravated when I bleed from a paper cut, so I can’t begin to imagine struggling with this disease. Not only that, but depending on the severity of the hemophilia A, some patients can develop even more serious health problems as a result of this.
So finally, here is some good news for hemophilia A patients: A new investigational hemophilia drug, emicizumab, cut the bleed rate in hemophilia A patients by 87 percent. The Swiss company, Roche, believes that this new hemophilia drug is super effective and can for sure out-compete other hemophilia A treatment companies, like Novo Nordisk and Shire.
Roche is definitely planning to cut into that $11 billion-a-year market for hemophilia a drugs. But what sets this treatment apart from others?
For traditional treatments, the rise of resistance or inhibitors in some patients hinder these treatments’ ability to control or stop the bleeding. Roche’s new drug, ACE910, supposedly offers a better alternative to this.
That’s not to say that this drug is the end-all be-all for hemophilia treatment development; actually, there are still some minor issues with the drug that analysts are a little critical of.
In some of Roche’s studies with this drug, there have been problems with thrombotic microangiopathy, otherwise known as damage to blood vessels in vital organs. This occurred as a result of bleeds that happened regardless of emicizumad treatment. To treat these bleeds, patients were given repeated high doses of bypassing agents, which instead made things much worse.
But critics will be critics, and you can read more about these concerns here.
Also there, you can read more about the new emicizumad treatment and how it may be a game changer for those affected by hemophilia A. As with anything new and exciting, however, tread with caution.
