A recent trial showed enteral ventilation is safe and could be used in the future to help newborn babies who are struggling to breath after birth, according to a recently published report
Humans could soon be “breathing through our butts” after boffins declared it “safe”. Scientists have tested out a method to delivery oxygen rectally in what’s being hailed a breakthrough.
According to a study published earlier this week, the trial showed the technique, known as enteral ventilation, is safe and “paves the way for future studies to see if this technique can help patients with respiratory failure”.
The technique is meant to provide partial oxygen “while allowing the lungs to rest,” Takanori Takebe, an expert in organoid medicine at both Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Osaka, told 404 Media.
He also said enteral ventilation isn’t meant to replace mechanical ventilators but serve as a “complementary oxygenation route”. Though safe, it hasn’t been proven to work on patients experiencing breathing problems yet.
The method could one say help newborns and premature infants who struggle to establish lung function after birth and support patients with severe respiratory failure or Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). In such cases, intestinal oxygen delivery could serve as a ‘bridge’ therapy until normal respiration or full ventilatory support can be established,” Takebe said.
The team published a study in 2021 showing enteral ventilation worked on rats, mice and pigs. In their latest trial, 27 healthy male volunteers received a liquid called perfluorodecalin through their rectums in an enema-like process.
The trial was to show if the process was safe and so the liquid was not oxygenated and nor were any of the volunteers experiencing respiratory problems. According to Takebe, the next phase will be testing the oxygenated liquid on patients with low blood oxygen levels.
“We are currently planning a Phase II trial in collaboration with clinical partners in Japan and the U.S.,” he said.
In 2024, Takebe’s team received the Ig Nobel prize, a satirical award that honors “achievements so surprising that they make people laugh, then think,” according to its website.
In 2022, scientists discovered that it is possible to breath through your butt. According to a report in the journal Clinical and Translational Resource and Technology Insights, a group of scientists performed a series of experiments on pigs and mice, based on the slow metabolism of turtles.
This involved scrubbing the intestines of the animals to thin out the mucosal lining- thus reducing the barrier to the blood stream. They were then placed in a room lacking in oxygen.
It is believed that because turtles have such thing linings, they are able to breath through their butts – kind of – and are able to survive in the winter.
According to their findings, they now believe that other mammals – such as we mere mortals – could also survive by essential breathing through our a**eholes.
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