Word: oxygenate
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...shunt more oxygen to the muscles, but it comes at a price. "If you take too much EPO," explains WADA's Dr. Gary Wadler, professor of clinical medicine at New York University, "the production of red blood cells is excessive, and the blood becomes viscous--it's like sludge." In the late 1980s, when EPO became available, nearly 20 European cyclists died of causes that some experts suspect were linked...
Enhancing oxygen delivery is a broad frontier. The process theoretically can be manipulated at many points. "It is inevitable that other pharmacological avenues to stimulate red-cell production will be explored--and exploited," says Dr. Michael Ashenden, project coordinator for a global blood-doping research consortium funded by WADA and USADA. "Putting in an EPO gene is only one way to get the same result...
Instead of finding novel ways of delivering EPO, for example, some researchers are hoping to harness modified versions of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying workhorse in red blood cells. Artificial blood has long been a dream of doctors who face perpetual blood shortages, and in recent years that dream is closer to becoming reality. One promising approach involves extracting hemoglobin from living cells and using it alone as an oxygen transport system. Unfortunately, naked hemoglobin is quickly broken down in the body. Housing the hemoglobin in an artificial cell, or modifying the hemoglobin so it remains stable, could solve this problem...
Beyond hemoglobin, there are totally synthetic blood substitutes like perfluorocarbon (PFC), a cheap, inert molecule with an enormous capacity to carry oxygen. Those fluids behave like an additional reservoir of oxygen for the body to utilize during exercise. However, because PFC has a short half-life and is effective only when individuals breathe abnormally high concentrations of oxygen, it will probably remain a very difficult technology to abuse...
...would exposure to influenza during pregnancy increase the risk of schizophrenia? No one knows. Perhaps the infection somehow damages the developing brain. Or the reason may have something to do with how influenza affects the mother's lungs, decreasing the amount of oxygen that can get to the fetus. But even if the link is real, it would account for just 14% of schizophrenia cases...