A Shotgun for Blood Clots

Think of it as Liquid-Plumr for the circulatory system. Researchers have designed a clump of tiny particles that rides the current of the bloodstream, seeks out life-threatening blood clots, and obliterates them. The approach works in mice and could soon move on to human trials.

Blood clots are bad news for the brain, heart, and other organs. These masses of blood cells can grow big enough to choke off veins and arteries, preventing oxygen from flowing to critical organs. One of the chief obstacles to dealing with blood clots is finding where they have lodged in the body. Even if doctors locate clots, they're hard to get rid of. Doctors often prescribe blood thinners that slow down the time it takes a clot to form, but such medication can also cause excessive bleeding. Another method is stenting, a procedure in which a flexible wire or tube is used to reopen a vessel. Patients recover quickly but often spend at least 1 night in the hospital.

Looking for a better approach, biomedical engineer Donald Ingber of Harvard University and colleagues turned to nanoparticles. Modeled after platelets—cells that circulate in the blood and help stop bleeding by forming clots—the nanoparticles are less than 100 nm wide and made of synthetic polymers stuck together like a ball of wet sand. Like platelets, clumps of the particles flow freely in the blood and gravitate toward blocked vessels by sensing a change in blood flow. Once there, they break apart into individual particles that stick to the clot, releasing a drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) that dissolves it

The researchers tested the approach on mice suffering from blood clots. After they injected the particles into the animals, the particles coated in tPA were able to reopen the blocked vessels quickly, despite harboring low dosages of medicine, the team reports online today in Science. None of the mice had uncontrolled bleeding, and because the particles are biodegradable, they are eventually broken down by the body.

"Making these particles so that they break apart at the right amount of force was a challenge," says Ingber. "The most exciting thing that we are able to do is deliver a clot-busting drug directly to a site where a clot is, without knowing where it is." He says that the particles could be used to deliver essentially any drug—an anti-inflammatory to a specific spot where inflammation was occurring, for example.

"The beauty of these nanoparticles is that they will not deliver this drug to any other place but the area of stress," says Heyu Ni, platelet biologist at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Canada, specifically referring to blood clot sites. Another advantage of the approach, he says, is that it gets around the issue of estimating the amount of anticlotting medication to give a patient. High dosages are effective but could cause excessive bleeding, whereas small doses are much safer but may not get the job done. The nanoparticles skirt this problem by depositing a small amount of medication directly on the clot. He notes that the nanoparticles could be used as a diagnostic tool to seek out blockages that may need to be removed surgically, since places where the nanoparticles wind up are easier to spot with ultrasound. "This could change our concept of how to deliver drugs effectively. I would think of this study as possibly revolutionary."

Unfortunately, DMSO is indirectly dangerous. Not for what it is and what it can do health wise, which are fine, but because of its permeability through skin, and the ability to transport non-desirable substances, contaminants, with it.

It is a capable solvent, and can even dissolve the salt on the surface of the skin, deposited by the sweat, back into the skin where it irritates the nerves. This is why before applying it to the skin, the skin should first be cleaned with distilled water.

While the DMSO available in stores, “sold as a solvent only”, is a good work around the law, it is not pharmaceutical grade DMSO, and nobody knows what contaminants could be in a particular batch. Literally you have to worry about parts per million or even ppb.

Probably, derived as it you mentioned from wood pulp, I would be very concerned that it could contain naturally occurring dioxins, which *can* be incredibly toxic.

There may be a workaround for this problem, however. This is DMSO2, sold OTC as “MSM”, sometimes in combination with other OTC medicines.

While it has been *suggested* that it could have a similar effect to DMSO as far as clotting is concerned, there are *zero* studies about it.

However, taking it in combination with an extremely dangerous drug like coumadin or warfarin is like playing with dynamite.

The following quote is excerpted from . . .
http://www.genesis2forum.org/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=39&id=933&Itemid=66
“Publisher’s permission obtained to display Chapter-6
DMSO - The Persecuted Drug - Dr. Stanley Jacob
[from the book Politics In Healing by Daniel Haley]”
Chapter 6 is displayed in its entirety at the above link.

“Strokes are the third biggest killer in the U.S., causing over 150,000 deaths a year. They are also “the primary cause of serious disabilities”, U.S. News reported on March 30, 1998, “leaving 3,000,000 people annually unable to work or take care of themselves”. If given soon after a stroke, DMSO, one of the world’s greatest solvents, has been shown to dissolve the clot that causes the stroke, thus restoring circulation and avoiding paralysis. How soon? Dr. Stanley Jacob says within the first few hours is best and intravenously is better than oral, but oral works too. Once DMSO gets into the body either daubed on the skin, given I.V., or by mouth, it permeates the body and crosses the brain barrier, so even taken orally it can improve circulation. One man who had a stroke at 7:30 AM refused to go to the hospital until after his wife had spoken with Dr. Stanley Jacob, which didn’t happen until 6:30 PM. Starting at 7 PM the day of the stroke, she gave him one ounce of 50% DMSO in a little orange juice every 15 minutes for two hours and then every half hour for two hours. The next day, her husband was better and soon returned to normal. A substance that can stop a stroke as it’s happening is something many might want in their home medicine chest.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Jack de Ia Torre is professor of physiology and neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He and Dr. Jacob believe that DMSO should be in every ambulance and emergency room so as to start giving it intravenously to stroke victims in the ambulance as soon as picked up or, at the latest, as soon as the patient arrives at an emergency room. If such were the established practice, the number of people dying or incapacitated from strokes would plummet.

Not only would many lives be saved, but also the awful hardship of paralysis or loss of speech might be prevented. A stroke, even survived, can often bring a person’s effective life to an abrupt halt. The savings to the medical system would be astronomical. The cost of the product: pharmaceutical grade DMSO retails at $30-40 a gallon.

DMSO’s ability to stop strokes is only its most dramatic and unappreciated attribute, and the one which would save the most lives, the most suffering, and the most money.

A close second is DMSO’s effectiveness with head and/or spinal cord injuries. Dr. de la Torre states there are around 1,000,000 head injuries each year. Of these about 500,000 are hospitalized with 50-80,000 being severe, another 50,000 moderate, and the rest less serious. Of the 50,000 severe, 60-70% either die or have severe continuing neurological problems (i.e., paralysis), a multi-billion dollar a year expense.

Research in animals indicates to Dr. de la Torre that if Christopher Reeve had been given DMSO intravenously immediately after his accident, he might never have been paralyzed. Dr. Jacob first has given DMSO intravenously to people who were already paralyzed - paraplegics - and little by little they regained use of limbs. One man, quadraplegic, recovered enough to go through college and then to work in a bank.

A recent study in Turkey combined DMSO with fructose diphosphate. In 20 patients with head injuries, the combination proved very effective in decreasing intracranial pressure. De la Tone declares that in his experience, nothing reduces intracranial pressure faster than DMSO. Animal tests in the 1960’s and then human tests on prisoners in 1967 demonstrated that DMSO is non-toxic, indeed, less toxic than aspirin.

In Dr. de la Torre’s tests on dogs, injuries that normally would have caused paralysis healed completely when DMSO was given. The mechanisms of action by DMSO are much the same in both strokes and spinal cord injuries. In DMSO, Nature’s Healer, Dr. Morton Walker summarizes Dr. de Ia Torre’s testimony to Congress in 1980 on DMSO’s methodology, based on his research with the drug which began in 1971:
DMSO permits and promotes better blood flow by dilating blood vessels, thus increasing the delivery of oxygen and by reducing blood platelet stickiness.

Because DMSO dilates blood vessels, carotid artery blood flow to the brain increases after DMSO is given intravenously.

After I.V. administration of DMSO, there is an elevation in the amount of spinal cord blood flow to the region of trauma. One of the first things that happens after spinal cord trauma is that a reduction of oxygen and blood flow sets in, inasmuch as the blood vessels constrict or shut down... Without some treatment, the tissue swells. Eventually, this leads to paralysis. In a cerebral stroke, the animal will either become comatose or lethargic or die. With DMSO infusion immediately after injury (or stroke) all this is prevented.

Thirty minutes after giving DMSO I.V., there is an increase in the flow of cortisone, a natural body substance which helps fight off effects of trauma, even though the animal being tested had already stopped secreting cortisone.
DMSO crosses the blood-brain barrier, enters the brain, picks up water from an injury, and rushes it out of the system, thus relieving intracranial pressure.

In animal tests, the animals are brought to a point where the electroencephalogram reading becomes flat, just preceding brain death... Ten minutes after injection of DMSO, the electroencephalogram returns and the brain becomes active again.

Dr.Walker adds, “DMSO tends to protect nerve cells... following injury. It provides better protection than any other treatments. Scientists have verified this by observation with the electron microscope and the light microscope. Thus DMSO prevents the paralysis that may ensue following trauma; it alters the severe effects seen after a brain stroke”.

Drs. Jacob and de la Tone believe that DMSO is the treatment of choice in strokes and note that de la Torre’s work has been confirmed by at least three different groups of investigators in other parts of the country. They also believe that the combination of DMSO with fructose disphosphate should be the treatment of choice in spinal cord and closed head injuries, where the fructose diphosphate provides energy to help restore damaged tissue.”

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