Injectable Enzyme Stops Wounds From Bleeding
4th March 2015
The researchers, from the University of Washington, created a synthetic material that can be injected when a person is losing a lot of blood. The material, PolySTAT, mimics the body’s enzyme Factor XIII, which helps the fibrin strands cement a blood clot. The researchers tested PolySTAT on a small amount of blood and found that it clotted much more quickly and effectively with PolySTAT; in a separate test on rats that had a major wound in an artery, the researchers found that the rats that didn’t receive an injection of PolySTAT lost 11 times more blood than did the treated rats.