WorldThrombosisDay t1_irrx21t wrote on October 10, 2022 at 4:03 PM

Reply to comment by Houki01 in AskScience AMA Series: I am Prof. Beverley Hunt, OBE, and I am a hematologist in London, England. I am also chair of the World Thrombosis Day Steering Committee. I am here to talk about why MTHFR testing is unnecessary and can cause misinterpretation. AMA! by AskScienceModerator

>What is thrombophilia? I get that thrombosis is a medical condition involving the arteries around the heart, but doesn't the -philia suffix denote an affection for something?

Great question! "Thrombo" is short for thrombosis (or blood clot) and "philia" means "loving." So thrombophilia is loving clots.

What we mean by thrombophilia these days is looking for inherited or acquired things that predispose to having venous thromboembolism (VTE).

Venous thromboembolism is when you have a deep vein thrombosis (DVT - a clot in the deep vein of the leg) which can break off and cause a pulmonary embolism (PE - when the clot moves to the lungs).

These days, laboratories across the world agree on the essential factors we need to test for, but there has been disagreement about some of the factors, and therefore some laboratories are doing many more tests than others.