Hydrogen sulfide can save life with deadly loss of blood, scientists from the United States have established

Serovodorod (H2S) - toxic gas with a disgusting smell of rotten eggs - can save life with a significant loss of blood. After the experiments on rats, American scientists from the Hatchinson Cancer Center came to this conclusion.

An article with the results of the study will soon be published in the Journal of Trauma Injury, Infection, and Critical Care. The authors of the article, biologist Mark Roth from the Khatchinson center, surgeon Robert Winn from the University of Washington and their colleagues for the first time showed that inhalation or intravenous administration of small amounts of hydrogen sulfide significantly increases the survival of rats with deadly loss of blood.

"Our goal was to develop a means of saving people's lives with a significant loss of blood, for example, in a car accident or on the battlefield. This discovery will obviously be useful to the military, but will also be of great benefit and civilian population," the Hatchinson Center The Word of Roth.

Scientists used the hydrogen sulfide to cause a state of gibernation similar to hibernation to reduce mortality due to insufficient blood supply to organs and tissues in mortal blood loss in rats. In the experiment, 75% of rats inhaled the hydrogen sulfide, and 67% of rats, who received it intravenously, survived two weeks after they lost more than half of all the blood of the body. In two control groups that did not receive hydrogen sulfide, only 23% and 14% of rats survived with such blood loss.

No functional and behavioral deviations in the rats surviving in the experiment was revealed. Moreover, they made normal healthy offspring, RIA Novosti reports.

The study was financed, in particular, the Pentagon Promising Research Office (US Defense Research Projects Agency - Darpa). As the final goal, the task was to create a means that a critical wound on the battlefield could independently make himself an injection and introduce himself to a lower metabolism. This will help to win time and wait for medical care.

According to the company, "the military believe that if a soldier can survive after a wound for three hours, this will give time to stabilize the situation in the battle zone and will allow him to evacuate him where he or she can receive medical care."

The mechanism of exposure to hydrogen sulfide on the metabolism is not entirely clear. According to one version, this gas reduces the need for oxygen, allowing neurons of the hippocampus, the area of ​​the brain responsible for breathing and heartbeat, to withstand the low level of oxygen caused by blood loss.

In 2005, the company and his colleagues first used a hydrogen sulfide to cause a state of reversible gibbernation in mice. The following works of his group were devoted to the possibilities of therapy using hydrogen sulfide of the consequences of bleeding, hypothermia, and stroke.