A remedy for carbon monoxide poisoning has been discovered.
Carbon monoxide is an odourless and colourless gas produced by incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. It is also a silent assassin.
Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is responsible for more than 400 fatalities and 20,000 emergency department visits per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). CO detectors and ensuring sure your fireplace and heaters are working properly may help reduce exposure, but treatment options for CO poisoning are limited.
That's why Tim Johnstone, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been working on a simple antidote.
"Right now, the main therapy for carbon monoxide poisoning is fresh air," Johnstone added. "It's only a matter of time." For the amount of CO in your blood to be reduced in half in fresh air, it takes four to six hours. The half-life is much shorter when using 100% oxygen or hyperbaric oxygen. Even yet, elevated CO levels in the blood may last long enough to cause long-term impairments and neurological issues."
Johnstone has been researching the chemistry of carbon monoxide, which is made up of a triple bond between one oxygen atom and one carbon atom. In a biological setting, CO binds to metal centres, such as the iron in haemoglobin, preventing the protein from performing its regular role of delivering oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body's tissues.
To combat this, Johnstone created tiny compounds that have many of the same properties as hemoglobin's active site but can bind CO much more firmly than the protein. His group revealed the capacity of one such chemical to bind CO, sequester CO that is already linked to haemoglobin, and recover red blood cells exposed to CO in a recent publication published in Chemical Communications, all hopeful indicators for a future antidote.
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These are preliminary findings, according to Johnstone, but the goal is to develop a quick-to-use point-of-care therapy. Headache, dizziness, weakness, upset stomach, vomiting, chest discomfort, and disorientation are the most frequent carbon monoxide poisoning symptoms. People may endure symptoms without recognising the risk and postpone getting treatment because it looks like the flu.
Daniel Droege, a graduate student, served as the project's lead person and is the paper's first author.
Johnstone's lab is also working on antimony-containing medications to treat the neglected tropical illness Leishmaniasis, generating novel arsenic-based anticancer treatments, and uncovering new main-group bonding patterns, in addition to carbon monoxide poisoning studies. The Hellman Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the University of California Cancer Research Coordinating Committee have all sponsored his research.
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