2023-05-28 16:00:00
When we sit for a long time or have an excessively sedentary life, we increase the risk of suffering a venous thromboembolism (TEV), an important cause of morbidity and mortality in developed countries. This explains, for example, why pregnant women or patients who cannot move for a certain period of time are prescribed anticoagulant medications. However, surprisingly, those people who remain immobilized for longer periodswhether due to injury or illness, have less likely to experience this type of obstruction of the circulatory system. Because? A scientific team has discovered that the culprit is a protein that self-regulates after long periods of activity and is present in both bears and humans.
Those people who remain immobilized for longer periods have less risk of thrombi.
Bear hibernation is one of the great mysteries of nature. During this period of inactivity, unlike other hibernating mammals, such as marmots or bats, the body temperature is not greatly reduced, but it drops only about 5 degrees Celsius (from about 38 to about 33 degrees). Yes indeed, metabolism keeps working, although slowed down to the bare minimum. They don’t even urinate or defecate.
As a consequence, they lose almost half of their body fat, although, surprisingly, they do not lose muscle fat or calcium in their bones, and they do not suffer from other diseases, among them circulatory thrombi, and this despite the fact that in this state of lethargy, heart rate slows from 50 to about 10 beats per minute. How does your body protect itself from these blood clots?, taking into account that they remain months without metabolic activity? This is what an investigation recently published in the journal Scienceand signed by a team of scientists led by the University of Reading, in the United Kingdom, with the participation of centers in Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. According to their research, it is due to the reduction in the expression of a protein, the same one that protects people who suffer long periods of immobility.
When they analyzed the proteins from hibernating brown bears, they discovered that a specific one, called HSP47, reduced its expression, and they believed that this could be behind the decreased probability of suffering a thrombus. The HSP47 protein is released by platelets, and is essential for blood clottingan immune response led by neutrophils with which the body reacts to prevent the loss of plasma.
evolutionary convergence
By examining the protein in question, the researchers found that when it acted, whether in bears or humansspurred on neutrophils, favoring the conditions that could give rise to an acute thrombosis. However, when the organism remained inactive for a long time, the expression of this protein was considerably reduced, as well as its interaction with these immune cells, which resulted in a decreased probability of suffering a thrombus. The researchers deduced that there must be some indicator in the movement that regulated the expression of this moleculewhich, as clarified by Dr. Manuela Thienel, coordinator of the study, to National Geographic, is about a case of evolutionary convergence of all mammals.
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New drugs against thrombosis
The discovery could help develop new drugs that protect patients prone to clots. “Now that we know that the HSP47 protein is so important, we can start to develop new drugs that inhibit clotting function,” says John Gibbins, director of the research at the University of Redding. Dr. Thienel specifies that the discovery could lead to new specific treatments for the treatment of venous thromboembolism or pulmonary embolism.
In any case, it should be remembered that, as long as you are not impeded by extreme necessity, the best recommendation to avoid cardiovascular accidents is still physical exercise. And that goes for both bears and humans.
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