RSS Feeds

Email a Friend Printer Friendly

Forecasting Heart Storms

April 02, 2002

The requirements of man to the weather forecast are changing before our eyes. Before, a temperature, precipitation and wind forecast could do, while now man want to know the condition of the electromagnetic field of the Earth in a month ahead, desirably. Those, who suffer from heart diseases, are the ones to worry most of all: cardio-vascular diseases worsen at geomagnetic storms.
        
The scientists at Russian People Friendship University and the Institute of Space Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, decided to see what happens in the cardiac system at geomagnetic storms. The scientists found out that the geomagnetic field storm influences the structure of the cardiac muscle cells fatally.
        
The research in the cardiac activity was conducted at different stages of the electromagnetic storm and the recovery period after it. The experiment took three days. The scientists studied the cardiac activity parameters of rabbits and examined heart cells with electron microscopy. Cells turned out to gradually become destroyed with the magnetic storm intensification. By and by cell membrane and muscle fibers also had their structure ruined. Breaches appeared in the nucleus. Certainly, such a cell cannot function normally.
        
Energetic centers of a cell, mitochondria, also suffer from the magnetic storm. They swell and that results in the less efficiency of their activity. The bigger mitochondria are, the weaker the heart contracts.
        
The scientists believe that it is the rush of fatty acids that accounts for such dramatic changes. When there is certain abundance of fatty acids in blood, they get into cardiac tissue. It is fatty acids that cause the swell of mitochondria and, consequently, the deficiency in energy. Normally, cells can repair mitochondria. For that there are special ferments, which get to the place of destination in special membrane vesicles. But in the period of a magnetic storm the abundance of fatty acids makes membrane almost impenetrable. The ferment cannot get out of the vesicle, mitochondria do not get help, cells do not receive extra energy, and the heart weakens.
        
Luckily, after the storm comes the calm and fatty acids start to interact with the membranes of the ferment vesicles in quite another way - they make them penetrable. The ferments rush at the destination. Mitochondria gradually normalize their activity and divide. As the result, the scientists observe quite a normal cardiac muscle cell under the microscope. The mitochondria are a little bit ragged, but they have recovered their functions. The heart beats regularly.

Informnauka (Informscience) Agency