Scientists in China have pulled off a remarkable feat worthy of Victor Frankenstein: reviving pigs’ brains up to 50 minutes after a complete loss of blood circulation. The macabre accomplishment could someday lead to advances in keeping people’s brains intact and healthy for longer while resuscitating them.
Nowadays, we can often revive people whose hearts have stopped (the formal term for this is a cardiac arrest), but after just a few minutes of no blood flow, vital organs like the brain are damaged beyond repair. That means that doctors only have a short time window to bring someone back without them experiencing, at minimum, major neurological complications. In this new research, published last month in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, the scientists sought to extend that window.
Past studies have suggested that liver function plays a key role in how well the rest of the body does during a cardiac arrest. People with pre-existing liver disease, for instance, seem to have a higher risk of dying from a cardiac arrest. So the researchers, based primarily at Sun Yat-Sen University, decided to test whether keeping the livers of Tibetan minipigs functionally alive could have a positive effect on their brains’ survivability after resuscitation.
All of the pigs had blood flow to their brains stopped, but some were hooked up to a life support system that kept their liver’s circulation going. The scientists then tried to revive the pigs’ brains after a certain period of time using the same life support system. Afterward, the pigs were euthanized and compared to a control group of pigs that had their blood flow left alone.
When the pigs had blood flow to both organs shut down, their brains were substantially more damaged following resuscitation, the researchers found. But the brains of pigs that had their livers supported tended to fare much better, with fewer signs of injury and a restoration of electrical activity that lasted up to six hours. The researchers were also able to restore brain activity in these pigs up to 50 minutes after blood flow to the brain was stopped.
“Our study highlights the crucial role of the liver in the pathogenesis of post-[cardiac arrest] brain injury,” the researchers wrote.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that scientists can now return anyone back from the dead perfectly intact with just a little boost to their liver. There are many damaging bodily changes that occur soon after a cardiac arrest, not just those in the brain and liver. And certainly more research will have to be done to confirm the team’s conclusions that the liver is critical to restored brain function. But if this work does continue to pay off, it could someday lead to practical interventions that improve the odds of successful resuscitation in people.
“The insights gained from the current and future studies have the potential to enhance survival and improve outcomes for patients experiencing [cardiac arrest],” the researchers wrote.
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