Hydrogen sulfide, the compound that makes rotten eggs and swamp gas stink, may be the key to long-sought-after suspended animation, scientists say.
"A little hydrogen sulfide gas is a way to reversibly and, apparently, safely cut metabolism in mice," Dr. Warren Zapol, a medical researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, told LiveScience. "There seemed to be no side harmful effects to the mice after hours of breathing it in. They got sluggish, but still responded to a pinch on the tail."
Previous studies showed hydrogen sulfide gas could slow down metabolism but never examined what happens to the circulatory system, the network of blood distribution commanded by the heart.
Zapol's team used ultrasound technology to view the hearts of mice as they inhaled hydrogen sulfide. After six hours, the heart rate of the mice halved, but their blood pressure remained normal, crucial to keeping blood adequately flowing through the body.
"When you make everything sluggish, you'd think the heart would become sluggish, but it didn't," Zapol said. "I was surprised how well it worked. You'd think poisoning the metabolism would dangerously slow it down, but it didn't really seem to interfere."
Zapol expects that combining hydrogen sulfide inhalation with chilling the body, another method of slowing down the body's machinery, could cut metabolism by up to 90 percent.
"Nine months in a spaceship heading out to Mars takes a lot of oxygen to burn, food and water to consume, and produces a lot of waste [carbon dioxide]," said Zapol, who is on the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Aerospace Medicine and the Medicine of Extreme Environments.
Theoretically, cutting metabolism would reduce the need for consumables and produce less waste, enabling spacecraft to travel lighter and faster.
Source: Xinhua/Agencies
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