thinman@uunet.UU.NET (06/05/90)
On the subject of overheating the blood: why not cool it instead? The human body has a vestigial survival reaction to being doused in freezing cold water. The metabolism slows to a few percentage points of normal, blood withdraws to the interior of the body, and the maintained body temp drops to around 80 degrees. (I'm reciting this all from a pop science article I read years ago.) This was discovered when people in car accidents were warmed up from this state with no discernible brain damage. Has there been any work on controlling this phenomenon? Lance Norskog
mel@iies.ecn.purdue.edu (Meloney D Cregor) (06/06/90)
In article <35957@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> ames!ames!claris!portal!cup.portal.com!thinman@uunet.UU.NET writes: >On the subject of overheating the blood: why not cool it instead? The simple fact AIDS is transmitted thru blood transfusions. Blood is stored at temperatures anywhere from -4 d. C to -20 or -70 d. C. (depending on the method used) This is mighty cold, but has had no detrimental effect on the virus. -- mel cregor mel@iies.ecn.purdue.edu mel!pur-ee
cycy@isl1.ri.cmu.edu (Scum) (06/06/90)
About heating the blood: I recall that the proceedure used of heating the blood has been done previously to treat some sort of cancer. In fact, the doctor who performed the proceedure was, I think, the one who developed the technique in the first place (or else pioneered it, or something like that). I though the temperature was 108 degrees, though. Anyway, I think the blood circulated through the patient's body while it was being heated, and (obviously) he had a temperature. The patient was unconscious for the duration of the proceedure. What I recall (I hope I am remembering the correctly) was that this was done originally to get rid of the KS (because the guy was in really bad condition with the KS) and that the disappearance of HIV infection of an unexpected (but happy) side-effect. More work, of course, needs to go into this, and I hope they start asap. I believe the hospital was in Texas, not Georgia. As far as a 105 degree temperature goes, my friend had temperatures that high, but I guess they just weren't high enough. We also tried to keep them down. I wonder what would have happened if we let them get as high as they could've... I suppose this all has to be very controlled, though, since high temperatures can course brain damage, too (or so I've been told). Anyway, I just wanted to add some more details that I could remember. I hope this is it. -- Chris. -- -- Chris. (cycy@isl1.ri.cmu.edu) "People make me pro-nuclear." -- Margarette Smith
jay@banzai.PCC.COM (Jay Schuster) (06/06/90)
In <35957@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> ames!ames!claris!portal!cup.portal.com!thinman@uunet.UU.NET writes: >On the subject of overheating the blood: why not cool it instead? >The human body has a vestigial survival reaction to being doused in >freezing cold water. Most viruses and bacteria survive at colder temperatures far better than multicellular organisms. Heat can denature essential proteins, or change the reaction rates for important biochemical reactions. This (as far as I know) is one of the standard reasons given for why your body generates a fever when it is sick -- it hopes to make the environment even less hospitable for the invaders than it is making it for itself. Cold slows reactions, and stabilizes proteins. The slowed reactions probably harm you more than the virus (which isn't really alive, remember), and stabilizing the viral proteins isn't going to do much in the way of inactivating them, most likely. If HIV has a very heat sensitive protein in it, then something like this would have a chance of working. Also, many latent viruses have a tendency to express themselves when the cells they are in are shocked (through chemicals or heat). If the latently HIV infected blood cells are shocked and the HIV is expressed, it might kill the cells (removing the latent infection) and then, if the virus is heat sensitive, permanently inactivate the virus. This is all pure speculation, of course. -- Jay Schuster <jay@pcc.COM> uunet!uvm-gen!banzai!jay, attmail!banzai!jay The People's Computer Company `Revolutionary Programming'