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A team of researchers from the University of British Columbia has shown for the first time that soil silicates promote blood clotting, quickly closing potentially fatal wounds.
“Soil is not simply our matrix for growing food and building materials. Here we discovered that soil can actually help control bleeding after injury by triggering clotting, “Dr. Christian Kastrup, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at UBC and lead author of the study, said in a statement.
When the soil interacts with the blood, it triggers the activation of a protein known as Clotting Factor XII. The protein enables a chain reaction that ultimately seals the wound and limits life-threatening blood loss.
Death from blood loss can occur in as little as five minutes after trauma. A study by researchers at the University of Uniformed Health Sciences Services in Bethesda, Maryland, estimated that about 500 people in the United States die each year from external bleeding.
“Excessive bleeding is responsible for up to 40 percent of mortality in trauma patients. In extreme cases and in remote areas without access to health care and wound sealing products such as sponges and sealants, sterile soil could be used to stop fatal bleeding after injuries, “says Dr. Kastrup .
Don’t try this at home
This does not mean that you can throw a handful of dirt over a bleeding wound. Non-sterilized soil poses a high risk of infection, which could make matters worse. Tetanus and soil fungal infections are known to occur when a wound fills with dirt. It is one of the reasons why a doctor will first clean a wound before applying medication and a bandage.
However, the findings could have important implications for how wounds are treated in a hospital or even on the battlefield. Doctors could use sterile soil to control bleeding and even learn new things about how infections occur after trauma.
In particular, sterilized dirt could be very effective in remote settings with limited medical resources and supplies. Poor and remote regions of the world come to mind, but researchers believe that sterilized dirt may be indispensable for controlling injuries that also occur on other worlds, such as injuries sustained by astronauts on the moon or Mars.
“This finding demonstrates how land mammals, from mice to humans, evolved to use silicates naturally as a specific Factor XII signal to trigger blood clotting,” says Lih Jiin Juang, first study author and PhD student. from UBC in the biochemistry department. and molecular biology. “These results will have a profound impact on the way we view our relationship with our environment.”
The findings appeared in the magazine. Blood advances.
