[HN Gopher] New protein therapy shows promise as antidote for ca...
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New protein therapy shows promise as antidote for carbon monoxide
poisoning
Author : breve
Score : 203 points
Date : 2025-08-14 11:56 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.medschool.umaryland.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.medschool.umaryland.edu)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >New Protein Therapy Shows Promise as Antidote for Carbon
| Monoxide Poisoning
|
| So Shatner was right all along: not only is Promise Margarine
| good for lowering your cholesterol level, but it can also treat
| carbon monoxide poisoning! And it tastes like butter, promise.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3wf717fKFE
| majkinetor wrote:
| I don't see a relation of any kind and I hate commercials maybe
| more than anybody else, but it's always a good time for a funny
| one with Shatner :)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Sheez, I can't believe I have to explain that Shatner shows
| Promise as antidote for high cholesterol too.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| He just played New Orleans. Somebody should've been
| throwing tubs of Promise margarine at the stage.
| bananapub wrote:
| not very on topic, but for those who missed one of the more
| surreal reddit threads in history:
|
| - [MA] Post-it notes left in apartment [0]
|
| - and the update from OP a while later [1]
|
| [0]:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34l7vo/ma_post...
|
| [1]:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/49zfvb/what_is_t...
| gus_massa wrote:
| It looks like he found a note in his room and see some strange
| thing in the window, and someone somehow says it's CO but it
| may be that the OP has unrelated hallucinations. Is this a
| symptom of CO poisoning? I think you only get sleepy, faint and
| die.
| maxbond wrote:
| Chronic exposure can lead to memory loss, yes. You're
| describing the symptoms of acute exposure.
| hinkley wrote:
| CO exposure is accumulative. If you're around an intense
| source of it you're toast. But with a small point source or
| decent ventilation it kills you slower.
|
| And your body produces new blood cells every day, so minor
| sources like wood smoke or burning a candle don't dose you
| enough to be a problem, unless perhaps your day job is as an
| athlete.
| hinkley wrote:
| Also looks like the half-life of CO in the blood is around
| five hours.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| How is this administered? Seems like a crucial detail to omit.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You can spread it on bread, melt it over pancakes, rub it all
| over corn on the cob, put it in baked potatoes, etc, promise!
| elric wrote:
| > This has the potential to become a rapid, intravenous
| antidote for carbon monoxide
|
| So intravenously, presumably.
| searine wrote:
| This research was funded by multiple NIH grants, a Department of
| Defense grant, and the Martin Family Foundation.
| jfarlow wrote:
| Here's the full sequence of the protein, found in the supplement
| [1]
|
| KSSEPASVSAAERRAETEQHKLEQENPGIVWLDQHGRVTAENDVALQILGPAGEQSLGVAQDSLE
| GIDVVQLHPEKSRDKLRFLLQSKDVGGSPVKSPPPVAMMINIPDRILMIKVSSMIAAGGASGTSM
| IFYDVTDLTTEPSGLPAGGSAPSHHHHHH
|
| It is a protein encoding the PxRcoM-1 heme binding domain with
| C94S mutation and a C-terminal 6xHis tag (RcoM-HBD-C94S)
|
| [1]
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2501389122#supplementa...
| sunrunner wrote:
| This looks like an puzzle input to a day from Advent of Code.
| meisel wrote:
| Thanks for that sequence, I can really picture it now
| dekhn wrote:
| You can search for it here: https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/searc
| h/sequence/KSSEPASVSAAERRAE... and in principle get the
| AlphaFold predicted structure (I couldn't find an
| experimentally determined one). However, like nearly all EBI
| resources, the web server timed out before I could get a link
| to the prediction.
| immibis wrote:
| Isn't it strange to see protein codes spreading the same way
| magnet links or AACS encryption keys might.
| winocm wrote:
| If you want to download SARS-CoV-2, here you go:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/NC_045512.2
| mhb wrote:
| That doesn't look right. I think the problem is in the last
| quarter. Exercise for the reader.
| kazinator wrote:
| The existing methylene blue substance is also effective in cases
| of CO poisoning.
|
| 1933 paper:
|
| https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/ajplegacy.19...
|
| "Methylene Blue as an Antidote to CO Poisoning", Matilda
| Moldenhauer Brooks
| skadamou wrote:
| This paper is interesting but I want to point out there is a
| difference between a research paper showing that something is
| hypothetically feasible and something that is actually useful
| clinically.
|
| Clinically, methylene blue is used to treat a different
| condition, methemeglobinemia and is not used to treat carbon
| monoxide poisoning which relies on hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
| kazinator wrote:
| The researcher used non-human animals; it worked on them.
|
| The hypothetical part was only that it might also work on
| humans.
|
| In any case, it seems the result was good enough as a
| clinical trial from the point of view of veterinary medicine,
| in regard to those specific types of animals.
| hinkley wrote:
| > Infused in the bloodstream, scavenger hemoproteins like RcoM-
| HBD-CCC rapidly bind to carbon monoxide molecules, reducing the
| time it takes to clear half of the carbon monoxide in the blood
| to less than a minute, compared to more than hour with pure
| oxygen therapy and five hours without any treatment.
| lawlessone wrote:
| I can see a market in selling this to urban cyclists..
|
| I've seen people doing that get quite a bit of exhaust fumes to
| the face.
| hinkley wrote:
| Breath control is an underrated skill.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| CO poisioning is one of those strange cases treatable using scuba
| diving. Recompression therapy, which can be theoretically aped
| under water, can be like magic. In some cases the patient just
| wakes up like nothing is wrong. No drugs. No invasive treatment.
| Get deep enough and hemoglobin isnt totally necessary for getting
| O2 where it needs to be.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470531/
| pfdietz wrote:
| This looks like a therapy you can only get once in your life,
| after which it has acted like a vaccine and your immune system
| would react to it.
| isk517 wrote:
| If getting carbon monoxide poisoning once isn't enough to make
| you invest in a few detectors then I don't know what will
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