Breathing fish may be key to surgery

Press, 25 February 1978, Page 15

Breathing fish may be key to surgery

Bv

AL ROSSITER,

of United Press International, through NZPA

Pennsylvania scientists are seeking the secret of suspended animation by studying an air-breathing fish that burrows into mud and slows its body functions in deep sleep for as long as two years. “Our ultimate interest is reproducing suspended animation (in humans),” said Dr Alfred Fishman, professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "It is not beyond the realm of imagination. “We would like to have a way by which we could cause a suspension of life at a lower metabolic level,” he added. Dr Fishman told an American Heart Association meeting yesterday that its potential for medicine alone would be great. The life functions of critically ill people could be slowed, so that doctors could concentrate on lhe ailment, and surgeons

would he able to operate with little interference from breathing, heartbeats, or other functions. Dr Fishman and his colleagues have been studying the strange fish

for years to see how it is able to slow its metabolic rate and survive for long periods without food or water. The creature is called a lungfish because it can breathe water using gills, or air using lungs, depending on the conditions, which often change in its tropical environment. Under ordinary circumstances, the African lungfish inhabits the. shallow

waters of lakes and rivers in Central Africa. During hot. dry seasons, the 1.20nietre creature escapes death by disappearing into mud, hollowing out a chamber in which it may nestle for months until water returns. When encased in its subterranean nest, the lungfish becomes dormant. Its heart and respiratory rates slow. Its kidneys stop functioning and its oxygen intake drops. The process is called “estivation.” Little is known about it, but Dr Fishman said estivation might be merely a more intense level .of hibernation. which appeared to be a deeper level of ordinary sleep. The scientists study lungfish flown to Philadelphia from Africa. But lungfish also are found in Australia and in the Amazon region of South America.