Suspended Animation In Mice Without Freezing 147
Predictions Market writes "Low doses of hydrogen sulfide, the toxic gas responsible for the unpleasant odor of rotten eggs, can safely and reversibly depress both metabolism and aspects of cardiovascular function in mice, producing a suspended-animation-like state that does not depend on a reduction in body temperature and include a substantial decrease in heart rate without a drop in blood pressure. The researchers measured factors such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, respiration, and physical activity in normal mice exposed to low-dose (80 ppm) hydrogen sulfide for several hours. In all the mice, metabolic measurements such as consumption of oxygen and production of carbon dioxide dropped in as little as 10 minutes after they began inhaling hydrogen sulfide, remained low as long as the gas was administered, and returned to normal within 30 minutes of the resumption of a normal air supply. 'Producing a reversible hypometabolic state could allow organ function to be preserved when oxygen supply is limited, such as after a traumatic injury,' says the lead author of the study. 'We don't know yet if these results will be transferable to humans, so our next step will be to study the use of hydrogen sulfide in larger mammals.' The full report is available online."
Yeah but... (Score:5, Funny)
True but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True but... (Score:5, Funny)
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Captain: Crew we are low on hydrogen sulfide to go into suspended animation during our light speed jump.
Crew: What's that mean captain?
Captain: Well, we have to eat these burritos and then pass this jar around.
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But seriously... H2S is a highly poisonous gas, so I would heartily recommend avoiding it whenever you have the option. Fortunately we can smell it at concentrations far below what it takes to do us harm in a brief exposure.
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Imagine you're 80+ years old, and given the option of living 2 years on chemo, or one without.
Would you be willing to live in pain, and as a major burden to society and your family in exchange for an extra year, especially at such an advanced age?
I'm not one of those odd folk who refuse all sorts of medical treatment, although once a certain point is reached, you're only (barely) prolonging the inevitable.
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A year might be worth it.
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Re:True but... Warfare or Hydrogen Sulfide? (Score:2)
suspension... and the characters probably WILL become... animated... But, I fear the doses required to suspend the animated warriors may be strong enough to ruin seals on masks, and possibly just burn up the lungs.
Gives new meaning to "compulsory expulsion"...
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Re:Yeah but... (Score:5, Informative)
That's actually a dangerous feature of hydrogen sulfide - it's quite poisonous and you can breath a fatal dose of it without even realizing that you're breathing a poison.
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:2)
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Re:Yeah but... (Score:4, Informative)
80 ppm of H2S is going to be lethal after 8 -24 hrs of exposure, much earlier you will be suffering bleeding and other very unpleasant effects.
At 500 ppm you're dead in 30 to 60 minutes and at 800 ppm you will not survive 2 minutes.
The kicker is at 1000 ppm, you're immediately unconscious and will die within seconds.
You'll start smelling it at about 0.1 ppm but at otherwise not lethal concentrations it will desensitise your nose and you will eventually not realise it's still around or getting stronger.
As a side effect it has a much wider range of explosiveness than regular hydrocarbon gasses and because it's heavier than air it will concentrate at low places.
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Many, many years ago before I moved into the 'safer' world of banking, I was involved with plat supervisory and management systems at a Petrochemical company. We often had to visit plant control rooms, which meant being uncomfortably close to the plant itself. It was always a favourite thing of the plant engineers to relate to us IT people how dangerous the stuff sitting in the plant was.
Given the fact that all plants leak over time, it was always one of the more interesting calls that a plant manager ha
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H2S is toxic in larger amounts and has no effect at all in smaller amounts, much like anything else. Any gases used in anaesthesia will be lethal if the concentration is too high for too long.
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I declare this year of the mouse! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I declare this year of the mouse! (Score:4, Funny)
Looks like we can do more for mice, than for humans
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Re:I declare this year of the mouse! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:I declare this year of the mouse! (Score:4, Funny)
Sure mice are making strides in the educational and scientific markets, but while you mouse people have been declaring it the "year of the mouse" for the last 10 years, squirrels have continued their predatory and monopolistic domination of both business and home rodent segments.
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Flying cars & Fusion w /Net + gains.... (Score:2)
Remember this next time you buy a curry.. (Score:4, Funny)
"All I can remember was this overpowering stink"
No, that isn't the next step (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that's not what they had in mind (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting the impression that this is more for rushing you to a hospital when they picked you up half-dead and bled half-dry off the side of the road.
If you're in serious shock for example, if the other mechanisms still work, the body will try to keep the brain alive, even at the cost of cutting off oxygen supply to the other internal organs. Which decay very fast. (Muscles have their own oxygen reserves, so they tend to survive, your liver doesn't.) Cells run out of oxygen and essentially commit suicide in an orderly fashion, i.e., apoptosis [wikipedia.org].
If it doesn't have enough even for the brain, which is often the case, the damage is irreversible and often fatal. Very fast.
So if they can slow your metabolism a lot, that might just give them extra time to haul you into ER. It might just turn that 5 minute rush before your brain starts getting massive damage, into, say, 50 minutes. Which might just do the trick.
I.e., briefly: it's not for colonizing Alpha Centauri, mate, it's just while they haul you to ER.
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Not many people can afford that much Somec.
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Is there any reason this can't be combined with other methods to make some form of hibernation a reality?
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still, sugar helps here i think...
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However, in order to do this, they must be completely exsanguinated and the blood replaced by a glycol compound (sorta like antifreeze). This way, the organs are mostly protected from damage by ice crystals...
However, the process is not 100% guaranteed, as people can not always be saved this way and even when the subject is correctly prepared, there is the risk of brain damage.
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I'd say that the Vorkosigan stories are harder sci-fi than most. Sure, you've got to allow Bujold faster-than-light travel/communications, but everything else is pretty consistent. It's a far cry from space opera, even if it doesn't have rivets. A lot of her stories revolve (indirectly) around biology, and there she's on pretty solid (if speculative) ground.
If you want to restrict "hard" sci-fi to stuff that doesn't break any laws of physics (or any other
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Just a small correction on Bujold: In the Vorkosigan books, there is no faster than light communications, only travel (via wormholes)
Several communication satelites move in and out of wormholes to transmit data between worlds, which results on long lag times and sometimes in total denial of service, in case of wars
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Vitrification vs Freezing (Score:2)
Very good point. This is why cryonic suspension efforts typically involve displacing as much water as possible with a cryoprotective (usually glycerol-based) solution before reaching the freezing point. This minimizes ice crystal formation, which is very much a Good Thing.
The current state-of-the-art in cryonic suspension involves using a vitrifying solution that never actually freezes at all, but instead becomes glass-like. There are still technical
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At least that's how it happened in the original Buck Rogers story. He was in a mine and exposed to gas that put him to sleep and he awoke 500 years later.
Herbert West, Reanimator (Score:5, Informative)
Iron and Apoptosis (Score:2, Informative)
I think the article you're referring to is http://www.newsweek.com/id/35045 [newsweek.com]
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I read recently (on /. I think) that it was discovered the tissue damage was done when RISING o2 levels triggered apoptosis.
While I'm not a doctor, I see potential in that. IIRC, the apoptosis is triggered by the mitochondria which are damped down by the H2S. It might be just the thing to allow re-perfusion and have the mitochondria resume metabolism in an orderly fashion without the massive cell death.
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Baby steps...lets sleep to mars and then look to Alpha Centauri.
Keep the bodies cold (not freezing) and let them sleep the entire way to Mars.
Hook them up to a vitamin packed IV, so they don't starve. Even at their slowed rate, two years is a long time.
Admittedly we might just do periodic wake ups so they can eat, stretch their muscles, and send status reports. The rate would just depend on the safety margin of the hibernati
Re:I think that's not what they had in mind Miss.. (Score:2)
"The more I miss it, de meaner i get" is what some might say. I guess it might separate the men from the mice, the asTROnaughts from assholenauts and the a*holenaughts...
Now, if necrosis or other tissue damage happens to the reproductive organs (why would they be different? Well, has anyone studied the effects of N2S on sperm count? Ovarian production?), colonization of dist
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it's not for colonizing Alpha Centauri, mate, it's just while they haul you to ER
Although considering the current perception in the medical community of EMTs and Paramedics, it's very unlikely this will ever come to pass. Most Ambulances are BLS (basic life support) trucks with, at best, and EMT-Intermediate (or state equivalent) who in most jurisdictions can't hang a normal saline drip without begging medical direction. Perhaps they'd eventually allow paramedics on ALS rigs (often dispatched after a BLS rig has been on scene for a few minutes) to do something like this since it's v
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As far as sci-fi style suspended animation, this isn't quite it. It will significantly reduce but not by any means stop metabolism. It could potentially be useful for months in space to reduce resources required, but certainly nothing like the frozen for 1000 years scenerio.
Medical uses are more likely. In addition to the emergency use you point out, it could also be useful for surgical procedures that aren't considered survivable today or perhaps to avoid some of the potential nasty effects of ECMO in a
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According to the Wikipedia entry on Hydrogen Sulfide, scientists did a study on mice in 2005 that came to the same conclusions as the summary. I hope this article isn't that old.
But, even more interestingly, good ol' Wikipedia links to a study [pccmjournal.com] done in 2008 on larger mammals (pigs). They could not reproduce the "suspended animation" effect - in fact, it seemed to do the opposite.
So - I guess no H2S administered in ambulances any time soon.
Re:I think that's not what they had in Mil-Civ App (Score:2)
i was going to ask "Are there any "StraTactical" uses/applications of this?"
But, then i think i probably have to answer my own question with:
1. deep-sea sleds-delivered divers or swimmers might get gas and the bends on delivery
2. what would be the weight tradeoff in sleds vs rebreathing units?
3. what kind of missions might need divers to be suspended?
4. would this enable submarine crews trapped at say 3,000 feet to hibernate until rescued?
5. could this be weaponized and used to attack ships even
Re:No, that isn't the next step (Score:5, Interesting)
Just off the top of my head, mines. Mandatory pressurized bottle w/ masks at every junction in a mine, in case of collapse (I'm thinking it *has* to be less explosive than storing bottles of pure oxygen). If it slows oxygen consumption to 25% (pulled out of my ass, because examples need numbers!) of normal, that gives rescue workers 4 times a long to dig out live bodies.
Once they are out, the hospitals/trained medical professionals can go about treating them for Crush Syndrome and for the poison that kept them alive by killing them slowly.
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If the concentration of H2S in the bottles is appropriate then breathing fast or deep will speed up the equilibrium between the blood level and the breathing gas, but won't cause an OD.
just to warn you (Score:2)
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Reducing the need to eat and drink would greatly reduce the mass of the ship. Or greatly increase the amount of supplies you had when you arrive at your destination.
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That's where the fun starts. Pull out the chimps! When we were kids we had to put little kittens in plastic bags and threw to to a brick wall. Now we get a lot of money for it. How beautiful science can be.
thats great! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:thats great! (Score:5, Funny)
Thats OK. Large scale software projects never have conflicting requirements.
Old News (Score:5, Informative)
In 2005 it was shown that mice can be put into a state of suspended animation-like hypothermia by applying a low dosage of hydrogen sulfide (80 ppm H2S) in the air. The breathing rate of the animals sank from 120 to 10 breaths per minute and their temperature fell from 37 C to just 2 C above ambient temperature (in effect, they had become cold-blooded). The mice survived this procedure for 6 hours and afterwards showed no negative health consequences.[6] In 2006 it was shown that the blood pressure of mice treated in this fashion with hydrogen sulfide did not significantly decrease.[7]
Such a hibernation occurs naturally in many mammals and also in toads, but not in mice. (Mice can fall into a state called clinical torpor when food shortage occurs). If the H2S-induced hibernation can be made to work in humans, it could be useful in the emergency management of severely injured patients, and in the conservation of donated organs.
As mentioned above, hydrogen sulfide binds to cytochrome oxidase and thereby prevents oxygen from binding, which leads to the dramatic slowdown of metabolism. Animals and humans naturally produce some hydrogen sulfide in their body; researchers have proposed that the gas is used to regulate metabolic activity and body temperature, which would explain the above findings.[8]
However, a 2008 study failed to reproduce the effect in pigs, concluding that the effects seen in mice were not present in larger mammals. [9] [pccmjournal.com]
Re:Old News (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe pigs are just used to smelling bad?
Not just old news, but a dupe (Score:2)
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Best cure for a suspended mouse (Score:2, Funny)
For wireless mice, check the battery level and ensure its paired correctly with its base station.
Send people to Mars or Alpha Centauri (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux (Score:5, Funny)
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Bah! I had a Dell desktop hooked up to a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard with all of those extra buttons once.
I once inadvertently hit the "Sleep" button. The machine went into a hibernate state that I couldn't get it out of. I asked our IT guy, and he said he's never found a way out of that state. The only solution (we could find) was to fully power off and cold boot.
I'm not convinc
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I had an ancient laptop many years ago whose hibernate mode could be interrupted only by pressing a key on the built-in keyboard, not the external keyboard. The internal keyboard had broken down long ago (the laptop was retired as a desktop), so the hibernation mode became a sleep of death.
So does this mean... (Score:4, Funny)
prrrrtttttttttttttttt......
"Ok, who left the fart ?"
"It was me ! I wanted to prolong your lives !"
"That's a kind of frank boldness I haven't seen before...."
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I don't know about you, but whenever anyone farts nearby my metabolism slows right down and I practically stop breathing.
(of course running for the door/window is another alternative)
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mere loud and long exhibitionist expulsions won't cut it, they need to *stink*. silent but deadly wins over foghorn-like showboating.
Freezing mice? (Score:2, Funny)
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Ahh memories (Score:1)
Cool (Score:2)
Quit getting in the way of science... (Score:4, Funny)
Test Site (Score:2)
I can see it now. An elevator in a high rise office building reaches the main floor. When the door opens, a car full of unconscious people is revealed. Subsequent investigation proves that the exhaust fan failed two floors below a stop on Floor 99, where the offices of the Beerf, Art & Ghasper Pickled Egg & Sausage Supply, Ltd. are located.
I think the old saying was, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good".
Just wondering... (Score:5, Insightful)
Old News (Score:1)
See Wikipedia "Hydrogen Sulfide".
Enough! (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe it wasn't the sermons (Score:4, Funny)
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Obligatory HG2G (Score:3, Funny)
Brain death (Score:2)
Oh great, any more bad news. (Score:2)
Now your telling me that we are going to have to smell this nasty stuff all the way to mars and beyond?
Talk about ruining the trip of a lifetime.
I'd rather take my chances with being frozen.
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GODWIIIIIIINN !
There, you have it. Oh, and BTW :
Since we're talking about sulphur gases, it's "the end justifies the beans".Re: (Score:2)
I think that's the point entirely - H2S is not good for them. Neither is common table salt, ethanol, water - you can kill any higher animal with enough of any of those.
What is good is the careful application of those substances. Too much or too little salt and you've got problems, but keep or restore the balance and you're good to go. Increase water intake without maintaining the electrolyte balance and you've got problems. Drink six bott