Stroke of luck
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Scientists have studied the blood of ursids in winter dormancy to understand how they escape the formation of blood clots in their veins. They identified a protein playing a key role in this natural protection, a discovery that could be useful for human medicine.
But how do bears not get phlebitis? They sleep half the year without moving an eyebrow and are doing very well, when we poor humans have to wear compression stockings as soon as we are immobilized for a few days to prevent the blood from clotting and forming a clot. … To understand the secret of ursids (and, if possible, draw inspiration from it), a team of German researchers analyzed their blood during hibernation and identified a protein that plays a key role in their natural protection against venous thrombosis.
Cardiologists and biologists
First, it was to make sure the bears didn’t have a miraculous predisposition that prevented them from having an embolism – a buildup of material in the bloodstream that could clog a vein. This hypothesis was quickly ruled out: an autopsy of certain bears found dead shows that they too can have a venous thromboembolism in certain situations, when they are not hibernating. Their coagulation system seems comparable to ours. “So bears have thrombo-inflammatory machinery
