An arginine to cysteine amino acid substitution at a critical thrombin cleavage site in a dysfunctional factor VIII molecule

We have analyzed the factor VIII (FVIII) protein and the nucleotide sequence around two thrombin cleavage sites, at arginine 372 in the FVIII heavy chain and arginine 1689 in the FVIII light chain in a naturally occurring dysfunctional FVIII variant, FVIII Okayama. The patient was a 42-year-old hemophiliac with a FVIII coagulant activity of 0.03 U/mL and a FVIII antigen level of 0.8 U/mL. The patient's FVIII was not thrombin activatable to levels seen in normal plasma. Immunoblotting of partially purified FVIII Okayama and normal FVIII showed that thrombin cleavage of the 92 kilodalton (Kd) heavy chain was impaired in the mutant protein. The patient's genomic DNA was amplified using the polymerase chain reaction with two sets of synthetic oligonucleotide primers spanning amino acid residues 319 to 400 and 1630 to 1720. Sequence analysis of the amplified DNA fragments revealed a cytosine to thymine transition, converting an arginine to a cysteine codon at residue 372. No abnormality was found in the FVIII light chain region analyzed. The patient's hemophilic brother and carrier mother revealed the same mutation. We conclude that the pathogenesis of hemophilia A in this patient is probably due to an arginine to cysteine substitution at a thrombin cleavage site in the FVIII heavy chain.