Word: nitric
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Pneumonia plugs up the lung's air spaces, reducing the surface area available for the lungs to exchange gas with the blood. Nitric oxide, produced naturally by organ linings as a hormone to dilate blood vessels, works by improving gas exchange efficiency in the remaining unclogged spaces...
Zapol reports in today's New England Journal of Medicine that after inhaling nitric oxide, eight of ten chronic ARDS patients survived. He said he has not yet observed any side effects, if low doses of the fresh gas are administered properly within seconds of its formation...
...actually harmless, Zapol said. The researcher said the Environmental Protection Agency assured him that while nitrogen oxide's "daughter product," nitrogen dioxide, also present in pollutants, is poisonous, nitric oxide itself is not dangerous...
Instructor in Anaesthesia Dr. Jesse D. Roberts, Jr., a member of Zapol's research group, said the discovery also explains why mountain climbers short of breath often claim that smoking cigarettes makes them stronger. The seeming paradox may be due to the presence of nitric oxide in cigarette smoke...
When a patient breathes nitric oxide, Zapol said, the gas never leaves the lungs. Instead, it combines with oxygen-carrying hemoglobin in red blood cells and is deactivated, so that any effects are purely local...