A revolutionary experiment conducted by scientists from United States and Japan concluded that mammals can breathe through their anal holes during emergencies – a potential breakthrough in treating lung-related diseases as well as Covid-19.
COULD you really breathe through your nether holes? A group of scientists says mammals can – and it could be a game-changer in resuscitation techniques in humans.
Researchers recently discovered that rodents and pigs share the survival capacity of aquatic organisms that can endure deathly low-oxygen conditions utilizing organs other than lungs or gills.
Takanori Takebe of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the Tokyo Medical and Dental University offer evidence of abdominal breathing in mice, rats, and pigs.
They did so in two separate experiments – one with oxygen gas and the other with oxygenated liquid.
First, they designed an intestinal gas system to administer pure oxygen through the rectum of mice and used it to test the animals’ ability to inhale through their anuses.
This investigation revealed mice could not survive beyond 11 minutes of lethally low-oxygen conditions without the system.
However, with the anal ventilator, 75 percent of the mice survived 50 minutes in the same life-threatening conditions.
The downside of this approach is that it’s unlikely to be clinically feasible (especially in severely ill patients) because the intestinal gas ventilation system requires abrasion of the intestinal mucosa.
The team decided to create a liquid-based alternative made of oxygenated perfluorochemicals for the second experiment. Such chemicals have already been shown clinically to be biocompatible and safe in humans.
The intestinal liquid ventilation system provided beneficial therapeutic results to pigs and rodents exposed to non-lethal low-oxygen conditions.
Mice that received the liquid-based oxygen could walk farther in a 10 percent oxygen chamber, with more oxygen reaching their heart, than mice that did not receive the ventilation.
Pigs faired similar results. Furthermore, intestinal liquid ventilation reversed skin coldness and pallor and increased the animals’ oxygen levels without apparent side effects.
Scientists hope their new system could be applied to humans, principally now during the Covid-19 pandemic, but also for people inflicted by air pollution-induced illness.
The researchers plan to elaborate on their preclinical studies and pursue regulatory actions to hasten the path to clinical translation with support from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development.
Tags: #experiments, #science, #respiratorysystem, #Covid19