Warfarin is one of the most common anticoagulants in the world.It is widely prescribed by doctors, but did you know that this component is a potent poison for rats? Continue reading and discover how Warfarin it became one of the luckiest accidents in the history of medicine.
Warfarin: the poison of rats that doctors prescribe?
The history of Warfarin goes back to the 20s of the last century. At that time, a group of farmers were seriously worried about the fact that their livestock died without explanation.the prairies of Canada and the north of the United States, and in a few words, cows that seemed healthy suffered internal bleeding and bled in a few hours.
The experts they discovered that the cows suffered these hemorrhages when they fed on clover hay, especially when the weather was wet.The Canadian veterinarian Frank Schofield , a pathologist at the Ontario School of Veterinary Medicine, discovered that l the cows died when they had consumed the mold-infected hay .
Schofield carried out an experiment to test their theory .This experiment consisted of feeding a group of rabbits with dry hay and another group with wet and moldy hay.Unfortunately the second group ran with the same fate as cows.Since then the disease was known as "clover disease of smell.”
Another veterinarian who worked at the North Dakota Experimental Agriculture Station in Fargo, Minnesota, Lee M.Roderick , discovered that the disease was preventable.In this sense, it was enough to not feed cattle with moldy hay and if it was too late, give them a blood transfusion from another healthy cow.
However, a Wisconsin farmer was completely desperate because it was winter and his cows they did not stop dying, so he went to the Experimental Agriculture Station in Madison .Alli found everything closed, except for the biochemical building, where the agronomist Karl Link .Link told the farmer that he should do blood transfusions to his cows, but the man could not do it since he was very poor and did not have the necessary resources or equipment.
After the meeting with the farmer in 1933, Link and his team dedicated themselves to isolating the anticoagulant from the scent hay .After six years they succeeded and named the compound dicumarol .Years later, Link began to consider the possibility of using dicumarol as a rat poison.It would not be long before he became the most successful pesticide of the moment, a pesticide that was named as Warfarina.
But it was not until 1951 when the potential of this poison was discovered as an anticoagulant for human beings.A young recruit from the United States Army tried to remove the life consuming Warfarina for 5 days in a row .Seeing that no death went to the clinic at the base where he was treated, he had a blood transfusion and injected large doses of vitamin K to help clot the blood The man recovered completely.
From that moment Warfarin went from being a successful pesticide against rats to an oral anticoagulant prescribed to humans to prevent thromboembolism and thrombosis.
If you liked this article, t and we invite you to read more about: The casual invention that saves lives in accidents.
Images: susan, Spike Stitch, Derek K.Miller
Comments
Post a Comment