During the winter of 1884 , Queen Victoria ’s youngest son , Prince Leopold , was convalescing in France . While there , he slipped and fell and could n’t stop bleeding . Within a few minute , he pop off . Prince Leopold was the first monarch known to suffer from hemophilia — a blood disorder that causes exuberant bleeding . It come out Victoria was responsible for for the spread of the " regal disease" among crowned head across Europe ( her relatives in Russia , Spain , France and Germany all had the disease ) .
There are several versions of the disease , but no one knew what case Victoria carried and this melody is now extinct . Evgeny Rogaev from the University of Massachusetts was odd about Victoria — she is particularly interesting because none of her ancestors carried the cistron , and scientists believe the Queen suffered from a ad-lib chromosomal mutation . Using the clay of the Romanov family ( Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra ’s children are Victoria ’s great grandchildren ) , researcher examined DNA to learn more .
Publishing the outcome in the journalScience , Rogaev notes that Victoria and her posterity suffer from a rarefied and severe shape of hemophilia B , or Christmas disease . Using multiplex target amplification and parallel sequencing , Rogaev and his colleagues comment a mutation on the F9 factor on the X chromosome , which controls the blood coagulate agent , Factor IX , and can alter RNA splicing . This sport matches those see in hemophilia B. Women generally only bear the mutation on one of their ex chromosome , meaning they rarely suffer from the disease and most often pass it on to their male descendants . Those male descendants do suffer from the disease , because it express itself on their only X chromosome .
