A joint original research project between Malta and China (the CHI-MA-HAEM-NET project) will be investigating aspects of Haemophilia in the Maltese Islands. Haemophilia is a rare genetic bleeding disorder, more commonly found in males, in which the blood does not clot properly.
People with haemophilia can suffer from both spontaneous as well as severe bleeding when injured or post-operatively. There are two types of haemophilia, type A which involves a deficiency in coagulation factor VIII (8) and type B which is a deficiency in factor IX (9). Since both proteins are vital for the production of a clot, a deficiency in these factors leads to excessive bleeding.
One of the main complications of haemophilia is repeated bleeding into muscles and joints, which over time can lead to chronic joint/bone disease, pain and disability requiring orthopaedic surgery. One aspect of this project will involve assessment of participants’ joints and bones to determine the status of their joint health. Due to the high risk of bleeding in haemophilia people, part of haemophilia care is clinical and laboratory monitoring the risk of post-operative haemorrhagic and thrombotic complications in patients who require orthopaedic or other major surgery, which will be expected to improve management and outcomes. This work will be done in collaboration with our Chinese collaborators led by Professor Jiong Jiong Guo at Soochow University. The Chinese research group will also look at the possibility of establishing haemophilia gene therapy for the Chinese population.
Locally, further research will be done to study the application of precision medicine for haemophilia, with individual laboratory evaluation of platelet and coagulation profiles, as well as genomic profiling to correlate patient genotype with their presenting symptoms and complications. Work is already on-going in the creation of an in vitro model of haemophilia to evaluate the appropriateness of reduced doses of anticoagulants as peri-operative thromboprophylaxis.
The CHI-MA-HAEM-NET project, led by Prof. Alexander Gatt, received funding from the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST) and the Ministry for Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (MOST), through the Sino-Malta Fund 2021 (Science and Technology Cooperation).
This research is being conducted at the University of Malta and is being performed with the support of the Malta Bleeding Disorders Society. This grant allowed the employment of two research support officers under the Department of Pathology, at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. The collaboration with a large Chinese Haemophilia community will certainly yield important information that would benefit the local and international haemophilia population.