Anal oxygen administration may save lives

Yeah...so here's an interesting one. A researcher at the Cincinnati Children's hospital conducted a series of experiments on mice, rats and pigs on rectal oxygen intubation.

In the first experiment, they anaesthetised several mice and scraped the mucous from their rectums. They then masked the mice to stop their breathing and pumped oxygen into their anuses. A control group was masked but received no anal oxygen. The control micr died in 15 minutes, while anal oxygen mice lived for 50 minutes.

In the next experiment, they decided to use liquid perfluorocarbons to carry the oxygen, meaning the mice's rectal mucous didn't need to be scraped away. The mice In this experiment received an enema of the oxygen rich liquids and lived for over an hour in an oxygen deprived in environment.

After these positive results they moved onto rats and pigs and were successful. They plan to start trials next year on healthy human volunteers.

Not sure what to say, i guess if it stops people dying on ventilators it's a good thing. Not sure it's something I'd be super happy about. But i guess if it saves lives...

www.economist.com...

Non-paywalled link

FISH BREATHE through their gills. That much is well-known. But some fish are also able to breathe through their bottoms. The guts of vertebrates are well supplied with blood vessels, to enable them to absorb digested food. But this means they can also, in principle, absorb oxygen. And that is precisely what happens in species such as the weather loach (pictured).

As far as is known, no land vertebrate can perform this trick. But, in a paper just published in Cell, Takebe Takanori of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, in Ohio, describes how terrestrial animals might, with a bit of assistance, be enabled to so. So far, Dr Takabe and his colleagues have turned mice, rats and pigs into bottom breathers. If they can extend the trick to people, it could offer an alternative to tracheal intubation as a means of keeping those with breathing difficulties alive.

Mammalian rectums are lined with layers of mucous which could limit the exchange of gases. To test the intestinal breathing hypothesis properly, this mucous would need to be removed, to grant oxygen direct access to the intestinal wall.

To begin with, Dr Takebe and his colleagues tried this with mice. After anaesthetising their subjects, they scraped away the mucous linings using toothpicks. They then fitted the animals with masks, to restrict their air supply, and pumped oxygen into their intestines. Control mice, masked but not so perfused, survived for less than a quarter of an hour. Those receiving rectal oxygen lasted 50 minutes.

Buoyed by these results, the team sought a less traumatic means of delivering the gas. They settled on liquid perfluorocarbons, which can absorb large amounts of oxygen and are often used as a blood substitute or to assist the ventilation of premature babies. The quantity of oxygen carried by such liquids, combined with the extra pressure they applied to the intestinal lining, meant scraping away the mucous was no longer necessary.

After administering oxygenated perfluorocarbon enemas to anaesthetised mice with intact rectal linings, the researchers put them in chambers with a restricted oxygen supply, to see what would happen. They found that mice dosed with perfluorocarbons retained high levels of oxygen in their blood for over an hour—more than four times longer than control animals not so treated

Following the success of these experiments, the researchers moved on to rats and pigs, and found that the technique worked with them, too. In light of this Dr Takebe hopes to start trials on healthy human volunteers next year.

a reply to: dug88

scraped the mucous from their rectums

Alright, I'll take the vaccine!

a reply to: dug88

College science majors, we present to you: A new way to get high.

Well, that is the way to drink sea water if you only have sea water.

I read years ago of a family that lost their boat in a storm and ran out of water in the life boat they were in. Fortunately the mother was a nurse and as a last resort, tried sea water anally with a syringe and it worked. It kept them alive for a few more weeks until rescue.

Your body absorbes water in the large intestine without absorbing the salt. It sounds like it works for oxygen also.

a reply to: dug88

If it comes to needing your rectum scraped. It's probably just your time to go.

a reply to: Randyvine

You played right into their trap.

I can see it now...a new tiktok challenge: a cartridge of laughing gas up your butt!

And I can already see the headlines about idiots blowing up their intestines with pressurized N2O and bleeding out while laughing hysterically.

I weep for the future.

a reply to: Vroomfondel

Come on, the butt chugging thing was like 8 years ago.

www.vice.com...

I worked with a young guy during those times. I learned his generation had been doing this so i asked him about it. He began to excitedly tell me all about how he'd tried it and this and that...yeah...he was also kind of an idiot...nice dude...but not the smartest.

If there's no hospital nearby, you can perform mouth-to-butt oxygen infusion.

a reply to: dug88

Am I missing something here? Sounds like the mice still died, just not as quickly.

I guess you could call it saving lives. I guess.

Blowing smoke up your ass

a reply to: NarcolepticBuddha

Well yes they died, but the good news is they had an additional hour of getting their anus raped. Isn't that the dream of all of us?

originally posted by: dug88
a reply to: Randyvine

You played right into their trap.

Bastards found my weakness.

Sounds more like they found a new novel way to torture mice to death.

Imagine having the mucus scraped out of your anus, then being kept alive so you could enjoy being unable to breathe for as long as possible.

a reply to: dug88

Wait till you hear about (or already have, you seem well read) the very serious and life saving procedure of fecal transplant.

Someone who has had their gut flora flashed, or a list of other weird niche ailments gets a transplant of centrifuged sh** from a healthy donor.

It may become more widely applied as we come to understand it.

originally posted by: caterpillage
Sounds more like they found a new novel way to torture mice to death.

Imagine having the mucus scraped out of your anus, then being kept alive so you could enjoy being unable to breathe for as long as possible.

Lol, that's what I was thinking.

I went down a rabbit hole after hearing how complex dolphin brains are in relation to humans... So I was curious what other animals have complex brains, heard about some of the sizes and wondered why they aren't as "intelligent".

Apparently it has more to do with brain to body ratio yhsy helps with excess intelligence past survival. Apparently mice have a pretty similar ratio, making them really smart considering their size. It's said that they're on par with dogs.

Poor little bastards in the lab. Better them than me though (again).

a reply to: dug88

look, you can stick that ventilator tube up your ass.

originally posted by: caterpillage
being kept alive so you could enjoy being unable to breathe for as long as possible.

I've woken up a couple times with breathing tubes and GI scopes down my throat. I tell you it was pretty terrifying. Your first instinct is to try to breathe with your lungs, well, good luck with that! I felt panicked immediately! I felt like I was suffocating even though I was recieiving oxygen.

Let me guess.

They will be teaching mouth to anus resuscitation in health class, CRR (cardio rectal resuscitation). Time for a new demonstration dummy for the lesson plan.

a reply to: dug88

Better than blowing smoke up our arse i suppose.