Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

May 15, 2021

Providing Oxygen through the intestines in Mammals is now possible as per research

Filed under: My Thoughts,News/Articles,Science Related — Suramya @ 11:53 PM

It takes a certain kind of mind to decide that today I am going to experiment if mammals can absorb oxygen through their intestines. Apparently a some of the aquatic animals like sea cucumbers and catfish, breathe through their intestines and since humans can absorb medicines through their intestines Takanori Takebe, a gastroenterologist from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital decided to do a study to see if they can absorb oxygen as well. So to test this out they basically injected pure pressurized oxygen into the rectums of the scrubbed mice (the mucus layer was thinned) and four of the seven unscrubbed ones. There was an immediate improvement in the O2 levels of the mice, with 75% the scrubbed mice surviving the procedure.

Obviously that is not a great survival rate and the scrubbing procedure is dangerous/involved but it did prove that mammals can absorb o2 with their intestines. So they looked at using perfluorocarbons which have a high O2 level and giving the rats & pigs an enema of the fluid. They saw an almost 15% improvement in the blood oxygen saturation allowing the subjects to recover from hypoxia.

These two tests prove that mammals can breath through their intestine but there is still a lot of study that needs to be done to check for the safety of this procedure. But if things go smoothly we can be looking at a new way to provide oxygen to patients when O2 canisters are in limited supply like the case currently in India due to the Covid crises.

But this doesn’t mean that mouth to mouth CPR will be replaced with mouth to ass CPR. (I can hear the sigh of relief from medical professional/emergency care folks).

More details on the study: ScienceMag: Mammals can breathe through their intestines
Full Paper: Mammalian enteral ventilation ameliorates respiratory failure

– Suramya

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