About 610,000 people die of a bosom attack every single year in the US – or so one in four deaths . They are often caused when a blood clot stops the bloodline flowing into the heart , but in some cases , hypoxia – a lack of oxygen – can also make one . When this happens , the affectionateness tissue gets damaged , which trigger off the attack .
Blood - thinning drugs and treatments can be used in the case of a origin clot - based attack , but hypoxia , which can also occur long after an initial attack , is sometimes a more troublesome beast to crush . A new subject field published in the journalScience Advances , however , may have come up with a rather fresh way of doing just that , and rather bizarrely , it involves algae .
A team at Stanford University ’s School of Medicine took their brainchild from the abundance of industrial plant life sentence around them . Photosynthesis , as any high school student knows , uses easy , carbon dioxide , and water to construct glucose and atomic number 8 . From botany to alga , it ’s happening all over the planet – and without it , our man would be very different indeed .
These scientists suspected that if they inject some photosynthetic vegetation into the damaged heart tissue paper of a patient suffering from hypoxia , then – providing it still got some spark – it would pump out O directly into the cell and revive them .
First off , they had to find the right plants to use . Taking spinach and kale , they strand them into a o.k. powder and introduced them to support tissue being cultured within a Petri dish . Exposing them to sunlight , they were disappointed to feel that photosynthesis refused to chance .
Suspecting the grinding process “ broke ” them , in a way of speaking , the team make up one’s mind to utilize blue - green algae , also known as cyanobacteria – the most primitive eccentric of photosynthetic organism have intercourse to scientific discipline .
Around 2.5 billion year ago , their ancestors were float atop the human beings ’s long - lose sea , slowly gulping up the volcanic carbon dioxide and pumping out O . These little critter were ultimately creditworthy for the Great Oxygenation Event , the point in which atomic number 8 was no longer being assimilate by the surroundings and could float freely in the atmosphere .
They ’re actually responsible for for sour our sky blue – and , having endure multiple mass extinctions over billions of years , it appear that come in them straight into damaged heart tissue did n’t stop them doing their noteworthy affair either .
Leaving the damage hearts of rats loose during the procedure , the sun - exposed algae happily infused these mobile phone with precious oxygen , boosting their overall levels by a gene of 25 . Overall , half of the damage due to hypoxia was ultimately prevented equate to the rats that did n’t have discussion .
Incredibly , there were n’t even any side effects to the procedure . There was no lower-ranking infection , and the rats ’ resistant systems did n’t go haywire and taste to demolish the cyanobacteria . Within just 24 hours post - shot , the algae had all but vanish without a tracing .
“ By using light rather than blood stream as a informant of energy , photosynthetic therapy increase tissue oxygenation , maintains myocardial [ centre ] metabolism , and yields perdurable improvements in cardiac function during and after initiation of ischemia [ lack of blood supply ] , ” the team conclude in their study .
“ This scheme has the potential to create a substitution class shift in the way ischemic bosom disease is treat . ”
So will algae be saving human lives in the future ? At this point , it ’s knockout to say – the method acting is only at the validation - of - concept level .
Leaving someone ’s chest exposed will be very risky indeed , but the team are already work on “ supercharging ” their alga so they only require a small bit of light to get set forth . Even if they are n’t used in heart failure surgery , there ’s a prospect that they could be used to boost the seniority of electric organ being transported ready for transplantation .
[ H / T : LA Times ]
