The purpose of this narrative review was to provide an overview that allows readers to improve their understanding of hemophilia A, which is considered a genetic disease with a high impact on the quality of life of people who suffer from it is considered one of the diseases with the highest cost for health systems (In Colombia it is part of the five diseases with the greatest economic impact). After this exhaustive review, we can see that the treatment of hemophilia is on the way to precision medicine, which involves genetic variables specific to each race and ethnicity, pharmacokinetics (PK), as well as environmental factors and lifestyle. Knowing the impact of each of these variables and their relationship with the efficacy of treatment (prophylaxis: regular infusion of the missing clotting factor VIII in order to prevent spontaneous bleeding) will allow for individualizing the medical behavior in a cost-effective way. For this is required to build more strong scientific evidence with statistical power that allows us to infer.

Hemophilia A is an X-linked disorder characterized by quantitative deficiency of coagulation factor VIII (FVIII) caused by pathogenic variants in the factor 8 (F8) gene. Our study’s primary objective was to identify genetic variants within the exonic region of F8 in 50 Colombian male participants with severe hemophilia A (HA). Whole-exome sequencing and bioinformatics analyses were performed, and bivariate analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between identified variants, disease severity, and inhibitor risk formation. Out of the 50 participants, 21 were found to have 17 different pathogenic F8 variants (var). It was found that 70% (var = 12) of them were premature truncation variants (nonsense, frameshift), 17.6% (var = 3) were missense mutations, and 11.7% (var = 2) were splice-site variants. Interestingly, 35% (var = 6) of the identified variants have not been previously reported in the literature. All patients with a history of positive inhibitors (n = 4) were found to have high-impact genetic variants (nonsense and frameshift). When investigating the relationship between variant location (heavy versus light chain) and specific inhibitor risk, 75% (n = 3) of the inhibitor participants were found to have variants located in the F8 light chain (p = 0.075), suggesting that conserved domains are associated with higher inhibitor risk. In summary, we identified genetic variants within the F8 that can possibly influence inhibitor development in Colombian patients with severe HA. Our results provide a basis for future studies and the development of further personalized treatment strategies in this population.

Hemophilia A is an X-linked bleeding disorder caused by mutations in the FVIII gene. Genetic factors have been shown to be a risk factor for the development of inhibitors. We aimed to identify the specific variations of the FVIII gene of patients with hemophilia A with inhibitors and their association with the inhibitor titer. Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study. We included 12 Colombian patients from a health care provider, “Integral Solutions SD”, who underwent analysis of genetic material (DNA), which was reported by the Molecular Hemostasis Laboratory in Bonn, Germany. Results: All of these patients were diagnosed with severe hemophilia A with inhibitors; ages ranged between 6 and 48 years, with a median age of 13.5 years. Molecular analysis showed the inversion of intron 22 in six patients (50.0%), a small duplication in two patients (16.7%), the inversion of intron 1 in one patient (8.3%), a large deletion (8.3%), a nonsense mutation (8.3%) and a splice-site (8.3%), findings similar to those of other studies. A total of 58.3% of the patients presented inversion mutations with a high risk of developing inhibitors A total of 83.3% of the evaluated patients presented null mutations; however the presence of high inhibitor titers was 66.7%. The most frequent mutation was the inversion intron 22. Knowing the type of mutation and its association as a risk factor for generating inhibitors invites us to delve into other outcomes such as residual values of coagulation FVIII as well as its impact on the half-life of the exogenous factor applied in prophylaxis.