The findings indicate that citric acid, the juice additive, may help alleviate recurring shortages of a protein called Factor VIII, which is important for the normal clotting of blood and is missing in most victims of hemophilia, a genetic bleeding disorder. The findings were presented at the Congress of the International Society of Blood Transfusion in Vancouver, British Columbia.
UCI researcher John Owens and Dr. Edward Shanbrom, one of the inventors of the first clinical treatment for hemophilia 35 years ago, found that adding small amounts of citric acid compounds to blood plasma produced four times the level of Factor VIII and other crucial clotting proteins compared to current extraction methods.
"Treatment of hemophilia has relied on transfusing patients with clotting factors to raise their levels in the blood and prevent excessive bleeding," Shanbrom said. "But current methods of extracting the proteins from blood plasma don't produce enough clotting factor. New therapies involve going through the contortions of using recombinant DNA to produce proteins from Chinese hamster ovary cells and purifying them in mouse cancer cells. These therapies are prohibitively expensive and not any safer from contamination. Thus, we have an acute need for an inexpensive and safe way to produce hemophilia treatments."
Hemophilia is the oldest known genetic bleeding disorder and is marked by excessive bleeding, inadequate blood clotting and, in severe cases, irreversible joint damage and life-threatening hemorrhages. It almost always appears in men, though women can be carriers of the disease-causing mutation.