By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, April 14, 2023 (HealthDay Information) — Lengthy intervals of immobility can put individuals susceptible to harmful blood clots — but hibernating bears lie round for months with none downside. Now scientists suppose they’ve found out why.
The researchers hope the perception can finally result in new medicine for stopping life-threatening blood clots — the sort that start within the legs however can journey to the mind and trigger a stroke, or to the lungs and trigger a pulmonary embolism.
Of their new examine, the researchers discovered that in hibernating bears, a specific protein — known as warmth shock protein 47 (HSP47) — is considerably dialed down from its regular exercise stage. And that seems to stop blood clots from forming whereas the animals are in months-long slumber.
Much more importantly, the investigators discovered, that phenomenon additionally happens in different species, together with people. Particularly, HSP47 exercise is low in individuals paralyzed by spinal wire accidents.
Which will sound counterintuitive, since momentary immobility — recovering from an harm or surgical procedure, or taking a long-haul flight — can promote blood clots in some individuals. However it’s identified that individuals with paralysis haven’t any greater blood clot danger than cellular individuals do.
And the brand new findings recommend that HSP47 stands out as the key, the examine authors mentioned.
The hope is that the discovering will result in new methods to stop blood clots in susceptible individuals, based on Dr. Tobias Petzold, one of many researchers on the examine.
“We want to additional examine the mechanism by which HSP47 works in stopping (blood clots) in additional element,” mentioned Petzold, of Ludwig-Maximilians-College in Munich, Germany.
Some long-used drugs are already used for stopping blood clots in at-risk individuals, together with old school aspirin. However, Petzold mentioned, they’ve uncomfortable side effects, reminiscent of an elevated danger of bleeding. So there’s nonetheless a must preserve looking for drugs which can be extremely efficient however safer.
“We expect {that a} ‘pure’ blood thinner that the physique is able to mobilizing spontaneously may assist deal with that unmet medical want,” Petzold mentioned.
Why flip to bears in that quest?
“We imagine that the bear is a strolling library of options to our sedentary life-style,” Petzold mentioned.
In spite of everything, he identified, hibernating bears spend a big portion of their waking lives feasting and packing on big quantities of weight, solely to then spend half the yr mendacity round doing nothing. For people, that is a digital recipe for weight problems, muscle loss, thinning bones, kind 2 diabetes and plenty of different well being issues — together with blood clots.
But bears emerge from their hibernation unscathed. Understanding what, precisely, protects them may theoretically level to utterly new therapies for numerous human illnesses associated to “trendy life,” Petzold mentioned.
Different researchers are learning bears for that very purpose.
A examine printed final yr by a Washington State College workforce recognized particular proteins that appear to assist protect hibernating grizzlies from diabetes.
People, it seems, have counterparts to these protecting proteins.
For the brand new examine, Petzold and his colleagues studied not solely brown bears, but in addition pigs that had been both cooped-up or free-roaming, and individuals who had been cellular or paralyzed by spinal wire accidents.
The researchers discovered that, on common, HSP47 from hibernating bears’ blood cells was decreased by 55 occasions, versus active-season bears. An identical sample was seen in each pigs and folks.
All of it means that HSP47 could possibly be a superb goal for brand new drugs for individuals at excessive danger of blood clots throughout shorter intervals of immobility, based on an editorial printed with the examine.
In the meanwhile, researchers know much more concerning the issues that set off clots than what protects towards them, wrote Mirta Schattner, who research blood clotting mechanisms on the Nationwide Academy of Drugs in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
In accordance with Schattner, the brand new examine “reveals that taking a look at nature could be a good technique to study human biology.”
Blood clots, nonetheless, don’t solely type when individuals are immobilized, Schattner identified. Power well being circumstances like diabetes and numerous cancers can increase the chance, too. So, she added, one query going ahead is whether or not this warmth shock protein is necessary to blood clotting in these instances, too.
The findings had been printed on-line April 13 within the journal Science.
