Serious trauma like a gunshot wound can cause massive blood loss. People sustaining such injuries have a 50-50 chance of survival. A coin flip.
Now, scientists at Tulane University hope to better those odds by turning to a product you might have in your home: Perfume. More on that in a bit.
As physicians race to save a trauma victim’s life, they face a dilemma that can impede survival. They must quickly infuse the patient with an enormous volume of blood.
At the same time, they need blood to clot in the wound to stop bleeding. The conundrum is that infusion of so much blood impairs clotting. This can pose devastating consequences since doctors can’t simply turn off the flow.
Investigators have known that blood vessels are surrounded by a barrier of sugar molecules, which protects cells. Without this protective barrier, hemorrhage is much more likely.
Tulane researchers, however, discovered on a cellular level how that protective layer of sugars can be ripped away.
Cellular metabolism, they found, jumps when a patient receives a large blood infusion. That allows enzymes to attack the sugars, releasing them into the bloodstream, where they work to impede clotting.
Now back to perfume. A synthetic compound, dimethyl malonate, [DI-meth-ull mal-un-ate] is used in perfume manufacturing. The folks at Tulane found the compound does more than help produce a sweet aroma. It also slows cellular metabolism. Don’t worry. Simply wearing perfume doesn’t do this.
Study authors hope the compound can eventually be used to create a drug that could be given to hospital-bound trauma victims.
That might just lead to saved lives in the ER.