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January 29, 2008

R.I. researchers find CO may hurt heart, too

We’ve heard how carbon monoxide starves the body of oxygen, leaving victims of overexposure with headaches, nausea, dizziness, and, in the most extreme cases, death.

But according to a study published in Academic Emergency Medicine’s January issue, carbon monoxide also weakens the heart by attacking heart muscle directly.

“These findings suggest that heart damage caused by carbon monoxide may have long-lasting effects even after it’s been eliminated from the blood,” Selim Suner, the lead author of the study, and director of preparedness and disaster medicine at Rhode Island Hospital, said in a statement.

In the study, a team of researchers from Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University, looked at three groups of animals: a group exposed to carbon monoxide and oxygen, similar to the conditions of most poisoning; a group of animals exposed to nitrogen, which also starves the body of oxygen; and a control group that breathed normal air.

In both the group that breathed the carbon monoxide/oxygen mix, and the group that breathed the nitrogen, the heart function appeared to be weakened.

But after treatment with 100 percent oxygen, the group that breathed carbon monoxide did not recover heart function or blood pressure as much as the nitrogen group did.

That led the researchers to believe that something other than oxygen deprivation was at work weakening patients who were exposed to carbon monoxide.

Gregory Jay, an emergency physician at Rhode Island Hospital, and associate professor at Brown University, co-authored the study.

-- projo.com staff writer Brandie M. Jefferson

Posted by Brandie Jefferson  at 11:01 AM | Permalink

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