Yujia Huang at New Scientist:
A simple modification to the cells that carry oxygen around our body seems to stop severe bleeds almost immediately. When applied to serious wounds in the livers of rats, the animals formed clots in just 5 seconds and lost very little blood, raising hopes that the approach could one day help people undergoing planned or emergency surgery.
Blood loss kills around 2 million people worldwide each year, with the risk rising with every minute that bleeding continues. In mild cases, blood clots normally form quickly, but more severe incidences can require costly transfusions that are hard to deliver quickly, or the use of bandages that sometimes trigger immune reactions or interfere with healing.
Although red blood cells primarily carry oxygen around the body, they also combine with platelets — cell fragments that stop bleeding — and a protein called fibrin to form a sticky mesh in response to injury, plugging the wound. Red blood cells make up the bulk of this plug, but are inherently fragile, which made Jianyu Li at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and his colleagues wonder whether they could be made stronger. “We saw and used the elephant in the room,” he says.
First, the researchers took blood from rats and separated out its various cellular components.
More here.
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