Magnetic fields could help prevent heart attacks

Magnetic fields could help prevent heart attacks
By Ben Coxworth
13:49 June 9, 2011


Overly-viscous blood can damage blood vessels and lead to heart attacks. Therefore, people who are at risk of heart attacks take medications such as Aspirin, in order to thin their blood. Such drugs can have unpleasant side effects, however, and can only be taken a certain number of times per day. Prof. Rongjia Tao, a physicist from Philadelphia's Temple University, now thinks he might have come up with a better way of thinning human blood - he subjects it to magnetic fields.
Tao had previously researched the use of magnetism for decreasing the viscosity of oil in engines and pipelines. Because blood contains iron, it turns out that it, too, becomes more fluid when magnetized.
In lab tests, Tao and Temple collaborator Ke "Colin" Huang subjected human blood samples to a magnetic field of 1.3 Telsa (roughly equivalent to an MRI) for approximately one minute. This polarized the red blood cells, which caused them to link together into short chains. These chains, because they are larger than single cells, tend to flow down the middle of blood vessels, instead of creating friction by moving against the inner walls. All told, he was able to decrease the viscosity of the samples by 20 to 30 percent.

The blood did return to its original viscosity once the magnetic field was removed, although it took several hours to do so. It is apparently safe to repeat the treatment over and over, however, as the function of the red blood cells does not appear to be affected.
"By selecting a suitable magnetic field strength and pulse duration, we will be able to control the size of the aggregated red-cell chains, hence to control the blood's viscosity," said Tao. "This method of magneto-rheology provides an effective way to control the blood viscosity within a selected range."
More work is required, although Tao hopes to ultimately make the treatment available as a preventative therapy.

The research is being published in the journal Physical Review E.

Fundamental and practical aspects of therapeutic uses of pulsed EMFs (PEMFs).

Bassett CA (1989) Fundamental and practical aspects of therapeutic uses of pulsed EMFs (PEMFs). Crit Rev Biomed Eng 17(5):451-529. Dept of Orthopedic Surgery, Columbia Univ, New York, New York. The beneficial therapeutic effects of selected low-energy, time-varying magnetic fields, called PEMFs, have been documented with increasing frequency since 1973. Initially, this form of athermal energy was used mainly as a salvage for patients with long-standing juvenile and adult non-unions. Many of these individuals were candidates for amputation. Their clearly documented resistance to the usual forms of surgical treatment, including bone grafting, served as a reasonable control in judging the efficacy of this new therapeutic method, particularly when PEMFs were the sole change in patient management. More recently, the biological effectiveness of this approach in augmenting bone healing has been confirmed by several highly significant double-blind and controlled prospective studies in less challenging clinical circumstances. There is also double-blind evidence of therapeutic effects in other clinical disorders. These data, coupled with well-controlled lab findings on pertinent mechanisms of action, have begun to place PEMFs on a therapeutic par with surgically invasive methods but at considerably less risk and cost. As a result of these clinical observations and concerns about EM "pollution", interactions of nonionizing EMFs with biological processes have been the subject of increasing investigational activity. Over the past decade, the number of publications on these topics has risen exponentially. They now include textbooks, speciality journals, regular reviews by government agencies, and articles in a wide spectrum of peer-reviewed, scientific sources. In a recent editorial in Current Contents, the editor reviews the frontiers of biomedical engineering focusing on Science Citation Index methods for identifying core research endeavors. Dr Garfield chose PEMFs from among other biomedical engineering efforts as an example of a rapidly emerging discipline. Three new societies in bioelectromagnetics, bioelectrochemistry, and bioelectrical growth and repair have been organized during this time, along with a number of national and international committees and conferences. These activities augment a continuing interest by the IEEE in the USA and the IEE in the UK. This review focuses on the principles and practice behind the therapeutic use of "PEMFs". This term is restricted to time-varying magnetic field characteristics that induce voltage waveform patterns in bone similar to those resulting from mechanical deformation. These asymmetric, broad-band pulses affect a number of biologic processes athermally. Many of these processes seem to have the ability to modify selected pathologic states in the musculoskeletal and other systems. Publication Types: Review Review, tutorial PMID: 2686932, UI: 90075745