[Beowulf] Re: overclocking with liquids

Gerry Creager gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Tue Sep 25 06:34:25 PDT 2007


I just knew I should have been following this thread...

I actually was involved in clinical trials some years ago with the 
old-style perflurocarbons  some years ago as blood-replacement therapy. 
  I've seen the longer tests of mouse submersion, including one critter 
that was eventually trained to perform immersed.  For long periods.  He 
appeared as comfortable perfusing with gas infused into the solution as 
he was scurrying around on the table, although getting out of the stuff 
meant a lot of coughing to clear his lungs.  Still, no ill effects.

Its us in humans, however, was more problemmatical.  We tended to see, 
when a sufficient quantity was infused to support life, problems in two 
areas:  1.  the molecules tended to aggregate in the liver and plug up 
the system, and 2. we tended to have to maintain higher oxygen 
concentrations for long periods of time causing lung toxicity issues, 
which were only slightly mitigated by high positive airway pressure 
maintenance.

We discontinued trials because of the rather daunting challenges of the 
patient population we had to work with, and the rather grim outcome 
statistics.

gerry

David Mathog wrote:
> richard.walsh at comcast.net wrote
> 
>> After a minute the 
>> mouse was running around again and seemed no worse off.
> 
> "Seemed" being the key word here.  If memory serves the biggest
> problem with being immersed in these types of oxygen carrying inert
> fluids is that they leak into the body, presumably through the lungs. 
> Eventually that gunk ends up in the liver which becomes cirrhotic.
> 
> Since the time scale was so short that really wasn't much of a safety
> demonstration.  There are lots of things that could be injected into a
> mouse and it would run around happily for a couple of hours and then be
> dead in a few days.  At the more extreme toxic end of the spectrum, 
> here are a couple most people have heard of:  ricin and alpha-amanitin. 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> David Mathog
> mathog at caltech.edu
> Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
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-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.862.3983
Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843



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