A breakthrough discovery by medical researchers has found a way to bypass the human respiratory system. That is, humans can now live without breathing. A team at Boston Children’s Hospital has designed microparticles that can oxygenate the body even if the respiratory system is not working. The oxygen-filled microparticles, injected into the bloodstream, would allow patients with respiratory failure to live without breathing for 15 to 30 minutes. The solution has already been tested successfully on rabbits.

Medical practitioners have tried to treat respiratory failures by injecting free oxygen gas directly into the bloodstream before. But, this type of injection of oxygen had the risk of creating bubbles in the bloodstream and blocking the blood circulation. The new solution resolves the problem.

The findings were published in the Science Translational Medicine yesterday. The solution was engineered by developing an “injectable foam suspension containing self-assembling, lipid-based microparticles encapsulating a core of pure oxygen gas for intravenous injection.” The oxyganted microparticles were inserted in the bloodstream by “intravenous injection”. The oxygen dissolves into the blood stream pretty fast, and reduces hypoxemia (a deficiency of oxygen in arterial blood), and “the incidence of cardiac arrest and organ injury.”

The can read the full research findings at Science Translational Medicine.

Source: Gizmodo