The new model predicts several useful new drug combinations that may one day help treat heart attacks, according to researchers at The Ohio State University.

Typically caused by blockages in the coronary arteries — or the vessels that supply blood to the heart — these cardiovascular events are experienced by more than 800,000 Americans every year, and about 30% end up dying. But even for those who survive, the damage these attacks inflict on the muscles of the heart is permanent and can lead to dangerous inflammation in the affected areas of the heart.

Treatment to restore blood flow to these blocked passages of the heart often includes surgery and drugs, or what’s known as reperfusion therapy. Nicolae Moise, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in biomedical engineering at Ohio State, said the study uses mathematical algorithms to assess the efficacy of the drugs used to combat the potentially lethal inflammation many patients experience in the aftermath of an attack.

“Biology and medicine are starting to become more mathematical,” Moise said. “There’s so much data that you need to start integrating it into some kind of framework.” While Moise has worked on other mathematical models of animal hearts, he said that the framework detailed in the current paper is the most detailed schematic of myocardial infarctions in mice ever made.

The research is published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Represented by a series of differential equations, the model Moise’s team created was made using data from previous animal studies. In medicine, differential equations are often used to monitor the growth of diseases in graph form.

But this study chose to model how certain immune cells like myocytes, neutrophils and macrophages — cells imperative to fighting infection and combating necrosis (toxic injury to the heart) — react to four different immunomodulatory drugs over a period of one month. These drugs are designed to suppress the immune system so that it doesn’t cause as much damaging inflammation in parts of the heart that were damaged.

This research focused on the drugs’ efficacy an hour after the mice were treated.

Their findings showed that certain combinations of these drug inhibitors were more efficient at reducing inflammation than others. “In medicine, math and equations can be used to describe these systems,” Moise said. “You just need to observe, and you’ll find rules and a coherent story between them.

“With the therapies that we’re investigating in our model, we can make the patient outcome better, even with the best available medical care,” he said.

Depending on their health beforehand, it can take a person anywhere from six to eight months to heal from a heart attack. The quality of care patients receive in those first few weeks could set the tone for how long their road to recovery will be.

Because Moise’s simulation is purely theoretical, it won’t lead to improved therapies anytime soon. More precise mouse data is needed before their work can become an asset to other scientists, but Moise said he does envision the model as a potential tool in the fight against the ravages of heart disease.

“Its going to be some years before we can actually integrate this kind of approach into actual clinical work,” Moise said. “But what we’re doing is the first step towards that.”

The co-author of the study was Avner Friedman, professor of mathematics at Ohio State. This research was supported by Ohio State’s Mathematical Biosciences Institute and the National Science Foundation.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Ohio State University. Original written by Tatyana Woodall. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Although biogas and biomethane remain climate-friendlier than non-renewable alternatives, the researchers call for better monitoring and fixing of leaks to ensure biogas and biomethane continue to live up to their green credentials.

Biomethane and biogas are produced from the breakdown of organic matter including food, animal waste, energy crops, grass, or sewage sludge, making them renewable alternatives to natural gas, coal and oil. However, researchers at Imperial College London have identified potential pitfalls in energy supply chains for these climate-friendlier gases, concluding that more efforts should be made to reduce methane leakage.

Methane traps around 27 times the amount of heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO₂) and is responsible for at least a quarter of global warming, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s AR6 report.

The new Imperial study, published today in One Earth journal, found that supply chains for biomethane and biogas release more than twice as much methane as the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s previous estimation. It also reveals that 62 per cent of these leaks were concentrated in a small number of facilities and pieces of equipment within the chain, which they call ‘super-emitters’, though methane was found to be released at every stage.

The researchers say urgent attention is needed to fix the methane leaks, and knowing precisely where the majority of them are happening will help production plants to do so.

Lead author of the study Dr Semra Bakkaloglu, of Imperial’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Sustainable Gas Institute, said: “Biomethane and biogas are great candidates for renewable and clean energy sources, but they can also emit methane. For them to really help mitigate the warming effects of energy use, we must act urgently to reduce their emissions.

“We want to encourage the continued use of biogas and biomethane as a renewable resource by taking the necessary actions to tackle methane emissions.”

The researchers note that compared to the oil and gas industry, the biomethane industry suffers from poorly designed and managed production facilities as well as a lack of investment for modernisation, operation, and monitoring. Because oil and natural gas supply chains have been primarily operated by large companies with huge resources for decades, they have been able to invest more in leak detection and repair.

What is biomethane and biogas?

In response to the climate crisis, many countries are replacing heavily carbon-emitting sources of energy, like natural gas, coal and oil, with biomethane and biogas.

Although they are made from a mixture of CO₂ and methane, biomethane and biogas release less of both gases, making them greener energy alternatives.

However, these replacement fuels still release methane along their supply chains, such as at processing facilities and from long pipelines. This new analysis gives us a more thorough understanding of where, when, and how much methane is released from biomethane and biogas supply.

Analysing emissions

The researchers analysed 51 previously published studies on mobile methane measurements and site data taken from emission sources along the biomethane and biogas supply chain. They analysed the data and calculated the total methane emissions using a statistical model called Monte Carlo. This allowed them to consider all measurements of total supply chain emissions at each stage of the chain, which they then compared with the off-site emissions reported from whole-site measurements in previously published studies.

They found that the supply chains release up to 343 g of CO₂-equivalent methane per megajoule higher heating value, which may account for 18.5 megatonnes of methane per year. IEA estimates had reported emissions as just 9.1 megatonnes in 2021.

While overall methane emissions from biogas and biomethane are lower than those from oil and natural gas, the amount of methane released from their supply chains relative to total gas production is much higher than for oil and gas.

The data is reported in ‘CO₂ equivalents’ — a unit of measurement used to compare emissions across the oil and natural gas supply chain without interfering with downstream operations. This unit also allows us to compare the global-warming potential of various greenhouse gas emissions from different studies.

The researchers identified the reasons behind the leakiness of supply chains as intermittent emissions patterns, which make them harder to track; insufficient usage of process equipment; and inadequate operations and maintenance strategies. Since super-emitters are unlikely to remain constant over time, the researchers say that continual monitoring is required to detect intermittent emission patterns or unpredictable leaks from supply chains.

Dr Bakkaloglu said: “To prevent biogas methane emissions negating the overall benefits of biogas use, urgent attention is needed including continuous monitoring of biogas supply chains. We believe that with the proper detection, measurement, and repair techniques, all emissions can be avoided.We need better regulations, continuous emission measurements, and close collaboration with biogas plant operators in order to address methane emissions and meet Paris Agreement targets.”

“Given the growth in biomethane due to national decarbonisation strategies, urgent efforts are needed for the biomethane supply chain to address not only methane emissions but also the sustainability of biomethane.”

Co-author Dr Jasmin Cooper, also of the Department of Chemical Engineering, said: “Addressing the fundamental design issues and investment problems within the biofuel and methane industry would be a good starting point for stopping these leaks and preventing more from arising.”

The researchers are now focusing on the super-emitters within supply chains to better understand how to reduce them using the best available technologies.

This study was funded by Imperial’s Sustainable Gas Institute.