Although small deletions, splice site abnormalities, missense, and nonsense mutations have been identified in patients with factor VII deficiency, there have been no reports of mutations in the factor VII promoter. We investigated a girl with factor VII levels that were less than 1% of normal in association with a severe bleeding diathesis. The patient is homozygous for a T to G transversion that occurs 61 bp before the translation start site. This nucleotide is in a sequence that is an hepatocyte nuclear factor 4 (HNF-4) binding site within the factor VII promoter (ACTTTG AE-->ACGTTG). Using gel mobility shift assays, we show that the mutation disrupts the binding of HNF-4 to its cognate binding site. In growth hormone reporter gene assays, the activity of a plasmid containing the mutant promoter was 6.7% of the wild-type promoter plasmid. Although HNF-4 was able to transactivate the wild-type factor VII promoter 5.4-fold in HeLa cells, no transactivation could be shown with the mutant promoter. These findings indicate that HNF-4 exerts a major positive regulatory effect on factor VII expression and provides in vivo evidence that binding of this transcription factor is critical for normal factor VII expression.