Hereditary blood disease haunts the Royal Family

Queen Victoria was the first of the British royal family to have a coagulopathy, from which many descendants were born.

is a rare disease with a rate of one in 10,000 people. It clung to the Royal Family for a long time.

According to Newsweek, the queen Victoria is said to be the first in the British royal family to have a blood disorder and has transmitted to her three children, Princess Alice, Princess Beatrice and Prince Leopold.

Picture 1 of Hereditary blood disease haunts the Royal Family
Queen Victoria in her youth.(Photos: Pinterest).

Prince Leopold has been diagnosed with a coagulopathy since childhood. Growing up, he often suffered from joint pain, a common symptom in coagulopathy, to the point of moving to Cannes (France). At the age of 30, he died of brain hemorrhage after an accident.

Princess Alice and Princess Beatrice both carry mutated genes. They married other royal families in Europe, causing some later descendants to become ill.

Friedrich, the fifth child of the princess Alice died of a coagulopathy at the age of two. Friedrich's sister Irene married Prince Henry of Prussia, passing the disease to her two sons, Prince Waldemar and Prince Henry. The two princes died at the age of 4 and 56 respectively.

Meanwhile, Victoria Eugenie, daughter of Princess Beatrice, has a coagulopathy disorder to Spain through marriage with King Alfonso XIII. Among their five children, two boys were sick and died when they were very young. A daughter also carries a mutant gene but her descendants are not sick.

Coagulation disorders have two forms A and B. Both originate from mutations in the X chromosome , one of the two chromosomes that characterize sex. Thanks to two X chromosomes, women rarely have coagulopathy.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, when suffering from a coagulopathy, genes that code for proteins that prevent bleeding are mutated, making the body unable or very difficult to stop bleeding. Coagulation disorders cause spontaneous bleeding in all parts, including joints and brain.

Queen Victoria's mutation affects coagulation factor IX, so her descendants are likely to have B. coagulopathy, however, today it seems to have stopped.

There is no scientific evidence that Queen Elizabeth II, who has a blood relationship with Queen Victoria, has a blood clotting disorder. Moreover, the risk of disease depends entirely on the mother's gene. Prince William and Harry's wife are not descendants of Queen Victoria, so the inheritance of coagulation disorders is almost impossible.