Carbon Monoxide Takes Turn As Treatment

Here's an experiment you definitely should not try at home: breathing low levels of the poisonous gas carbon monoxide to fight disease.

The gas, a byproduct of some kinds of combustion, is colorless, odorless and binds to the hemoglobin in your blood so tightly that oxygen, the usual passenger on the protein, can't get on board. Breath enough carbon monoxide and you suffocate.

While high concentrations of the gas can kill you, some scientists believe a little bit, say 5 or 10 percent of the lethal level of CO might just help combat inflammation, a big problem in a wide range of diseases, the Boston Globe reports.

 

After experiments with rats and pigs showed small amounts of the gas reduced rejection of transplanted organs, researchers tested very low levels of the gas in 31 kidney transplant patients. Don't get your hopes too high. The results haven't been published, and the test was put on hold pending review of the data.

Still, another early human study explored carbon monoxide as a potential treatment for inflammation from smoker's lung, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The results, though preliminary and limited, showed treatment was at least feasible.

A researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital just picked up a big grant from the National Institutes of Health to tease out how carbon monoxide triggers protective responses in cells.

Dr. Claude Piantadosi at Duke University has given CO to healthy people and found it boosted the activity of genes associated with mitochondria, the power plants of cells.

The known danger of carbon monoxide weighs heavily on the research. "It scares physicians like myself, and I've treated a lot of carbon monoxide poisonings,'' Piantadosi told the Globe. But the chemical also is made normally in the body and serves some worthwhile purpose. "So the issue is how does that all work,'' he said.