Ready for the most counter - intuitive firearm of medical enquiry you ’ll hear about today ? University of Oklahoma Neuroscientist Junie Warrington and colleagues have discovered thatcontrolled oxygen starvation can invert radiotherapy stimulate brain damage in mice . Does this intend that you could cut across the nuclear wasteland of your bombed - out city safely just by holding your breath ?
Not quite – it ’s a bit more complicated than that .
When someone comes down with a head neoplasm , they ’re often treated with whole encephalon radiation therapy ( WBRT ) . The problem with this is that 40%-50 % of survivors have to treat with cognitive impairment afterwards . The radiation lessen blood vessel density in important parts of the brain , essentially starving it of nutrients . You save the mind , but return it less effective .
What Warrington and her team have pick up is that this brain damage can be reversed in mice – just by depriving them of oxygen . One calendar month after the radiation handling , the mouse were subjected to either normal O levels , or 11 % atomic number 8 ( hypoxia ) for 28 day . By cutting the atomic number 8 levels to half normal for almost a calendar month , the investigator write , the treatment “ totally reversed WBRT - induced impairments in learning . ” And pedigree vessel density increased , persisting for at least 2 months follow hypoxia handling .
It ’s not entirely well-defined why why this treatment work . The researchers believe that the WBRT may interfere with the body ’s power to organise new origin watercraft , which the hypoxia may do something remedy . I would n’t count on this stumble hospitals ( or nuclear barren ) until a fate more research has been done , but it ’s an challenging vein of research .
NeuroscienceScience
Daily Newsletter
Get the honorable technical school , science , and culture news in your inbox day by day .
newsworthiness from the future , delivered to your present tense .
You May Also Like
