from Hacker News

Researchers complete first human trial on viability of enteral ventilation

by mustaphah on 10/21/25, 6:44 PM with 85 comments

Study: https://www.cell.com/med/abstract/S2666-6340(25)00314-9

  • by timerol on 10/22/25, 12:49 AM

    I really expected this to be overblown clickbait, but the article delivers on the title about as well as it could. I have seen many more breathless articles on treatments that weren't already conducting human safety trials as well as having animal effectiveness trials concluded.

    And yeah, it turns out that mammals can absorb oxygen through their butts. Weird

  • by AnonC on 10/22/25, 2:56 AM

    The answer to the most important question is at the end of the article. They demonstrated that this is safe, not that it’s effective.

    > “This is the first human data and the results are limited solely to demonstrating the safety of the procedure and not its effectiveness,” said co-author Takanori Takebe of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the University of Osaka in Japan. “But now that we have established tolerance, the next step will be to evaluate how effective the process is for delivering oxygen to the bloodstream.”

    If it’s proven to be effective and can help avoid ventilators for (at least some) people, it would be a huge breakthrough and improvement in the quality of life for the patient and for their close ones.

  • by polishdude20 on 10/22/25, 1:21 AM

    I wonder if, given that our intestines can absorb gasses into our blood stream, if that also means we readily absorb our farts into our blood stream as well? The chemical composition of them could be having effects on your whole system maybe?

  • by qyph on 10/22/25, 1:04 AM

    I wonder if this could be used for doping in aerobic sports? Could this elevate overall oxygen intake in a healthy person?

    My vague understanding is that oxygen intake is a big limiting factor in aerobic activities hence measurement of things like vo2max in sports science. ‘Blood doping’ has similar benefits though it’s also about having more blood period.

    It seems unlikely that one could take a big enough suppository to help in a meaningful way in a marathon, but in a middle distance race lasting only a few minutes…

  • by qlm on 10/22/25, 1:10 AM

    If this was enough to temporarily replace breathing I wonder how that would feel if you were otherwise healthy. I imagine not breathing would instinctively feel quite strange and even distressing.

  • by pontifier on 10/22/25, 6:25 AM

    My mother is currently dying in the hospital with breathing problems. I mentioned this to her earlier today... I thought this would have been much farther along than it is. Hurry up with the medical tech already!

  • by radu_floricica on 10/22/25, 7:17 AM

    I wonder:

    - what's the actual oxygen carrying capacity? If they're up to human trials then I imagine they've already validated this step in animals

    - can it also scrub CO2?

    Without doing more research, I'm putting most of the probability mass into it being be a small but significant oxygenation aid. Not enough to let us survive without working lungs, but enough to push the odds in emergency situations, while also being harmless. Something like 5% extra survivability for a $100 cost and a sore butt. Well worth it, but not a revolution.

  • by belZaah on 10/22/25, 7:00 AM

    There was a time, where there were bellows made available along the Thames in London. Because it was believed blowing tobacco smoke up someone’s backside would be a really useful mechanism of resuscitation, in particular in case of drowning. There’s a itsy bitsy kernel of truth in everything…

  • by Qem on 10/22/25, 1:00 AM

    The proof of concept by sea cucumbers probably predate us by several hundred million years[1]. I wonder how .any more people could be saved from COVID with this deployed.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_cucumber

  • by smcnally on 10/22/25, 2:00 AM

    > The technical term is enteral ventilation via anus (EVA).

    Anecdatally, I have encountered multiple people with congenital capabilities re enteral locution via anus.

    Wishfully, training astronauts for enteral ventilation via anus during extravehicular activities that involve writing an ongoing Prince song would be called “EVA EVA 4EVA.”

  • by boltzmann-brain on 10/22/25, 6:51 AM

    there's a lot to air and gas within our digestive tract that we don't seem to understand.

    one time when i got salmonella, i started reading up on it (believe me, i had nothing better to do) and i postulated a hypothesis: the bacteria starts out being able to (barely) survive in your normal gut biome, but creates sulfur gas in order to thrive, and then once it does, losing that atmosphere kills it.

    so i started swallowing massive amounts of air, and laid down so that my head was the lowest point of my body. low tech? yes. stupid? who knows. but i was feeling better on the next day - and normally it takes a week or two to clear out.

    n=1, take it with a lump of salt. hopefully sharing this helps someone in some way in the future.

  • by plantsbeans on 10/22/25, 2:00 AM

  • by silisili on 10/22/25, 3:37 AM

    Interesting. Perhaps related? The Ohio river(and probably others) used to have smoke enemas at points for drowning victims. I'm told it's where the phrase 'blowing smoke up your ass' comes from, as people eventually thought it was snake oil/foolish.

    So this is about oxygen delivery specifically, but I can't help but wonder if whoever came up with the old idea was onto something...

  • by p0w3n3d on 10/22/25, 5:48 AM

    It somehow resonates in me with one of the first memes I was sharing

      Do you think that's air you're breathing now?

  • by vlovich123 on 10/22/25, 12:44 AM

    Could this completely obviate tracheotomies and ventilators?

  • by hyperific on 10/22/25, 1:20 PM

    If this proves to be effective (not just safe and well tolerated which is the scope of this study) it'd be interesting to see how this would be adopted by extreme athletes. Free divers who can go deeper, cyclists who can ride harder, sprinters who can run longer at full speed because they're retaining an oxygen-rich slurry in their bowels.

  • by bcuzrecentdeath on 10/22/25, 12:38 PM

    Is phrenic nerve stimulation (and possibly necessarily vagus nerve suppression) enough to keep a person breathing?

    There is eVNS; external Vagus Nerve Stimulation.

    Stimulating the phrenic nerve causes the diaphragm to contract. Stimulating the VNS causes airways to contract.

    What devices exist for "diaphragm pacing" and wouldn't that be lower risk than mechanical ventilation?

  • by ivan_gammel on 10/22/25, 10:30 AM

    I remember an old anecdote from my childhood: "A hedgehog figured out how to breathe with his butt, then sat on a tree stump and died". We live in times when even such jokes become close to reality.

  • by carlosjobim on 10/22/25, 2:33 AM

    Oxygenated blood should instead be directly injected into the main artery while deoxygenated blood is sucked out of the main vein and into a scrubber and rebreather apparatus for oxygenation.

    Much better in every way.

  • by afarviral on 10/22/25, 12:04 PM

    Would it not be more direct to do gas exchange with blood?

  • by stogot on 10/22/25, 3:27 AM

    It’s unclear how they cycle the oxygenated fluid and … cycle the fecal matter that is likely to occur

  • by mitchbob on 10/22/25, 3:41 AM