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Protein Gel Quickly Stops Bleeding
Stefan vd Linden writes, "An international team of scientists has discovered a substance to heal bleeding wounds within seconds. They're using a solution of protein molecules that self-organizes into a biodegradable gel. Until now they've only tested it on animals, but the tests were highly successful. From the article: 'Some surgeons are already excited about the material. "I see great potential in the eye field, the gastro-intestinal field, and in neurosurgery," says Dimitri Azar, head of ophthalmology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, US. "In the eye, even a drop of blood will blur your vision for a long time," Azar adds. "A material that would stop the bleeding could lead to a paradigm shift in how we practice surgery in the eye."'"
It's called platelets. It was invented long ago. Thank goodness, or I would have died the first time my nose bled...
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An alternative to ingesting krazy glue!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
this would be great... if I cut myself shaving its a real pain in the ass... I have to doctor myself for a good hour to get some litle nicks to stop. My shots to stop bleeding cost around 1,000 bucks a pop, so its not like I can just give myself a shot for a minor nick - granted this won't help with joint bleeds, but hey, as long as they don't charge an arm and a leg for the stuff, i'll be happy.
Now if I could just rub it on the skin to stop joint and muscle bleeds... wow... a gift from heaven?
There's a company called HemCon that makes a chitosan bandage - it's a protein gel bandage made from chitosan extracted from shrimp shells. The US Army currently uses it in Iraq & Afghanistan.
A large percentage (which I don't have the time to look up right now) of battlefield deaths are really bleeding to death, not instantaneous. To this end, soldiers carry "Quckclot", a powder that is similar to this product- similar but not the same. This seems to work faster- and would save lives on the battlefield.
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Geeze, you sure do have a cynical view of scientists. They love animals just as much as you do!
In the study, they only used animals with emotional problems who would cut themselves. They would watch the animals, and after the animal would cut themselves, they'd apply the protein gel. While they were studying the healing of the wound, another team of scientists who are conducting experimental depression therapy would treat the animals to stop them from cutting themselves any more. Both humans and animals benefit!
Also, I have it on good authority that rabbits actually enjoy having mascara smearing into their eyes, and were quite upset when they discovered certain humans were trying to stop the practice.
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Sometime in pre-history, it was noticed that many things like; dried marigold petals and spider web staunches blood. It was common practice to bleed patients at one time, and when the leech was removed, spider web was used as a poltice. I have personally used spider web on cuts, and it stops the flow in seconds. I should have applied for a research grant dang it!
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As a potential solution to rising gun fatalities, maybe we could use it to coat bullets.
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According to the title the gel quickly stops bleeding, but I think it would be better if it didn't bleed in the first place.
So I think I'll wait for version 2.
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Indeed - superglue was invented to close wounds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superglue#Medicine and is still used in hospitals around the world
How about packing helmets/vests/etc with a layer of this stuff for things that get through? I for one would prefer that the padding in a helmet be filled with this rather than plain ol' squishy gel.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The proteins they use are structurally very similar to natural silk, which is composed of proteins arranged primarily in a beta-sheet conformation. This conformation lines up strands of amino acids in a rough plane and cross-links them, usually with hydrogen bonds, but sometimes with ionic attractions or hydrophobic interactions.
The use of spider silk for clotting wounds has been known since ancient times; coagulation basically requires the onsite formation of a sticky, fibrous protein mess, and spider silk is almost completely sticky, fibrous protein (and unlike many similar foreign substances, doesn't provoke a dangerous immune reaction). This protein gel is basically the same sort of thing, but with the neat added trick that the cross-links are the result of ionic interactions, so that you could have an anhydrous powder of this stuff that you sprinkle onto a wound, and when it contacts electrolyte-rich bodily fluid (their paper on peptide nanofiber nerve scaffold notes it only requires normal physiological concentrations of salt, like those in saline or spinal fluid- from the news article, that's not especially clear), it turns to a fibrous gel.
As far as whether it promotes healing, interestingly enough, clotting itself promotes healing- the clot itself stimulates the cells in charge of repair- really, the sooner a stable clot is formed, the sooner your own cells can start fixing the damage. In the neural scaffold paper, the group also points out that, being composed of just the same amino acids ubiquitous in the body, the scaffold can be safely broken down to amino acids and then metabolized or excreted; I would imagine the same would be possible for the clotting gel when it is no longer needed.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
My protein gel stops the bleeding for about nine months, then needs to be reapplied.
Here is the original press release:
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http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/hemostasis.htm
Not much new information here, but it's nice to read things that come "straight from the horse's mouth", so to speak.
Of real consequence is the main researcher's lab website:
http://web.mit.edu/lms/www/
It is chock full of interesting research on self-assembling peptides, including what substances they've been trying, and the eternally-asked question, Can I run my laptop off of spinach?(They isolated the chloroplast/photosystem of spinach, and hope to use it for photovoltaic purposes).
As far as discussion, most of the application has been suggested in the field of delicate microsurgery. Why not band-aids for the masses? Most likely due to the cost. Aside from the financial barriers in bringing an idea to mass-market, especially in the medical field, imagine trying to keep the candidate liquid substance stable for storage, to be used at a moment's notice; if it self-assembles easily, then it can "gel up" just as easily, too. This is combined with the fact that there are already several fairly effective ways to stop the typical cuts-and-scrapes of a household, from regular band-aids and gauze to liquid bandages (which quickly seals off a wound and prevents bleeding, in about the same amount of time). The real application would be in situations where regular hemostasis measures cannot be used or are undesirable. Again, this goes back to microsurgery. In most surgery, hemostasis is achieved by either tying off the bleeding vessel with suture, cauterizing the end of the vessel with a Bovey (an electrical tool used for cutting and cauterizing) or a laser, or simply clamping the vessel with a hemostat. There are other methods, but those are the most common ones in routine surgery. Clamping the vessel is not practical in confined spaces (the hemostat takes up space), cautery can't be used in all situations, and you can't always tie off the bleeder. The self-assembling gel described would be a boon in those surgical situations, another "arrow in the quiver", so to speak. The aforementioned application in patients with hemophilia is also plausible, if less certain.
Sadly, the journal that they are publishing in, Nanomedicine, is fairly brand new and not stocked by my local library yet. There have only been three issues of it so far (June 2006, August 2006, and October 2006) and the latest is not on their website yet. I would really like to read that article in full.