|In a medical case of Jekyll and Hyde, carbon monoxide, the highly toxic gas emitted from auto exhausts and faulty heating systems, was shown to be effective in treating pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), an extremely debilitating condition that can lead to right heart failure and eventual death.
Published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, the findings, by Leo Otterbein, PhD, of BIDMC's Transplantation Center, Department of Surgery, show for the ﬁrst time that this toxic gas can reverse existing disease.
"Carbon monoxide was ﬁrst proposed to prevent the onset of certain inﬂammatory conditions nearly 10 years ago," says Otterbein. His lab has been instrumental in demonstrating that when administered at low, nontoxic concentrations prior to organ transplant surgery or balloon angioplasty, CO provides potent protective effects against organ rejection or blockage of the carotid arteries.This has led to clinical trials to test the use of CO among kidney-transplant patients.
In this latest research, Otterbein and colleagues discovered that CO was able to induce the death of smooth blood cells, which in PAH patients have inexplicably thickened to the point that blood ﬂow is impeded and stenosis develops.