Scientists often observe certain whims of nature and they try to imitate them in search of benefit to man. There’s everything from designing drones based on animal flight to getting whiter white paint that mimics beetle scales. As if all that wasn’t enough, now a team of scientists from several Japanese universities are trying to imitate freshwater fish in order to save patients with respiratory failure. And they did it in a very curious way: by introducing oxygen through the anus.
It turns out that these fish, called loaches, have something known as intestinal respiration. That is, although they have a normal gill system, in conditions of reduced oxygenation secondary form of respiration through your digestive system. Air is sucked in through the anus and gas exchange occurs, which usually takes place in the lungs. in the intestines. This is due to the fact that their intestines have a very thin epithelial layer with a large number of capillaries and red blood cells, which ensure the transport of oxygen into the blood. hypoxic conditions.
These scientists wanted to know if this process, which occurs naturally in fish, could be imitate mammals. That is, is there a way to introduce air through the anus so that it processed in the intestines? They first decided to test it on rodents in a study published in Honey in 2021 with very good results. After, repeated the study in pigs. This new study has already been described in statements to some media, although it will not be published for several weeks. Finally, they would like to test it in humans, which is why they have already scheduled clinical trials in patients with respiratory failure starting in early 2023.
Breathing through the anus, fantasy or reality?
In their first study, the scientists took a group of mice and tried to model their intestines to resemble a human’s. loaches. To do this, they first scratch the walls get a thinner epithelium, which would facilitate gas exchange.
As soon as they did this, they noticed that it increased expression of genes responsible for vascularization. That is, according to the instructions of DNA, they began to make more blood vessels, including capillaries. This will make the result more fishy.
Having reached this point, they began to inject gaseous oxygen through the rectum of the rodents with respiratory failure. They did the same in the control group, whose bowel walls were not scraped, and found that this was indeed a key step for improve animal breathing.
However, scraping of the intestinal mucosa was painful and uncomfortable for the mice. Therefore, they chose the second option, which was to introduce liquid oxygen. More precisely, what was injected through the anus of mice was a mixture based on oxygenated perfluorodecalin (PFD)a fluid that has a remarkable ability to adsorb O2 and CO2 so that it also facilitates the gas exchange that normally occurs in the lungs.
Climbing pigs and people
The results with mice and rats were so positive that the scientists transferred them to pigs. They have not yet published this study, but expected the treatment to be very effective again. Therefore, given that these animals are genetically and physiologically much more similar to humans, there would be no intestinal respiration also served in our form.
Administering oxygen through the anus may be a way to resolve lack of respirators that were tested at certain critical times, such as the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason, these researchers are already recruiting patients with respiratory diseases for clinical trials. No doubt it will be something amazing for the volunteers. However, if it works, oddly enough, it’s certainly a good option. Until then, we’ll have to wait. It is still too early to be sure that we will be able to solve respiratory failure by introducing liquid oxygen through the anus.
Source: Hiper Textual
