Let's say you are a girl and you have hemophilia. Would you die when you get your period?

Hemophilia is caused by a lack of clotting factor VIII or IX in the blood. In most cases, hemophilia is passed down through families (inherited). Most of the time, it is passed to male children.

Like most recessive sex-linked, X chromosome disorders, haemophilia is more likely to occur in males than females. This is because females have two X chromosomes while males have only one, so the defective gene is guaranteed to manifest in any male who carries it. Because females have two X chromosomes and haemophilia is rare, the chance of a female having two defective copies of the gene is very remote, so females are almost exclusively asymptomatic carriers of the disorder.

Alfred, I have to agree with Tweety bird. Though, she may have given you more information than what she needed on the medical aspects of hemophilia. :-)

Probably not. Hemophilia normally affects bleeding caused by injuries, internal or external. A girls period is normally self-limiting, but the rare chance is that it could be more life-threatening the normal. As Tweety said, you could expect your periods to be heavier than someone without the disease. Normally, though, I would think that such a young lady would pay more than normal attention to her cycles and be ready in the event that she notices anything wrong. The problem I would expect to see, however, is that many doctors would laugh this off as being paranoid. I have seen far too many doctors, today, turn away people who are having heart attacks and simply tell them to take an aspirin. :-(

As Murphy's Law demands, there is always the possibility. This has simply been my experience throughout life. And, the most likely time for this to happen would be when you are not able to reach a doctor or hospital. :-(

It's unusual for a girl to have two defective genes for this disease. Hemophilia is an X-linked recessive trait and because it's an X-linked disorder so she would have to have had a hemophilic father and a carrier mother and the defective X chomosome would have to be passed on by the mother to cause her to develop the disease. The father must necessarily pass on his X chromosome in order for this child to be female. The way it usually works is that the defective X chromosome from the father is balanced by a normal X chromosome form the mother and the child is a carrier. A hemophilic female doesn't die from menstruation but she would have heavy, prolonged periods and might require transfusion.