Article: Hibernating Bears Provide Clue to Preventing Serious Clots in Humans

[Sly Saint]

Low levels of the clotting factor HSP47 protect the sleeping giants from blood clots, and the same may be possible for humans and other mammals.

here’s a reason long airplane flights increase your risk of blood clotting conditions such as deep vein thrombosis: immobility causes veins to kink, allowing blood to pool and potentially clot. But hibernating animals, like bears and ground squirrels, don’t have this problem.

Now, a study published in Science on April 13 helps explain why hibernating bears rarely get blood clots, despite moving their hulking bodies very little during the winter months. In it, researchers found that when bears enter their sleepy winter state, they tamp down on the production of heat-shock protein 47 (HSP47), which typically sits on the surface of platelets and helps them bind to collagen. This phenomenon isn’t unique to bears—humans and pigs also temper HSP47 production in times of immobility, the team discovered. The findings could help scientists detect who is at risk for deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, collectively known as venous thromboembolism, and pave the way for future treatments.

Blood clots are one the leading causes of death globally. “The clinical problem is well-known [and] of major clinical importance . . . [and yet] has puzzled investigators for a long while,” says Thomas Renné, a chemist at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf who was not involved in the study but has collaborated with some of the authors previously.

So, for the study, the team used an unusual model species, hibernating Swedish brown bears (Ursus arctos), to figure out why the bears rarely ever get blood clots when they hibernate (although autopsies show they do sometimes die from blood clots in the summer months). The study was conducted in collaboration with the Scandinavian brown bear research project, which, for the past 30 years, has conducted ecological research on brown bears in Sweden and Norway.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-...e-to-preventing-serious-clots-in-humans-71064

research paper (not full text)
Sleep like a bear
Reduced expression of a platelet protein protects against thrombosis during chronic immobilization
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh3276

 

[Mij]

I saw this earlier on twitter and it reminded me of dauer state theory discussion we had on PR years ago; mistakenly entering a state designed for survival in harsh conditions.