#thrombosis

Clots and More

Factors in involved in blood clotting need to be disabled once their staunching role is over otherwise clots would become problematic. Tasked with breaking up one such coagulator called von Willebrand factor is the enzyme ADAMTS13. This study in zebrafish reveals that ADAMTS13 is also key in vascular development and maintaining balanced functions in tissue

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Samuele Sartori and Ignacio Babiloni Chust, and colleagues

Department of Cellular, Computational and Integrative Biology (CIBIO), University of Trento, Italy

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Biology Open, October 2025

During the quarantine it can be difficult to get yourself be physically active so I'm gonna scare you a little bit

Try to get up at least every few hours and walk around the apartment for a bit, just a few minutes. While sitting you can just move your ankles. And don't forget to drink. Why?

You might not notice it at first, but muscles weaken hella fast when they're not used

Also, pulmonary embolism is a bitch, so let's try to avoid it

When you sit for a long time (like playing skyrim for 12 hours straight for example) and you don't move your legs at all, the blood circulation in them can worsen. Pumping blood UP in your legs is hard and often it is assisted by the leg muscles flexing and basicaly massaging the blood up. If that's missing and you add to that thicker blood due to dehydration, your legs are going to be pretty unhappy

Because thick blood and poor circulation can lead to thrombosis (clogged vein). Basic symptoms of thrombosis are pain in the leg and slight reddening of the extremity. If you're not sure, check the color of both legs. If the color is off or the pain persists for more than a few days / is getting progressively worse, go to a hospital. Better they give you some pills to make your blood thinner or you're risking complications like pulmonary embolism

Pulmonary embolism is that coagulated blob of blood that clogged your vein, but that blob decided to travel. Because all blood in veins is blood that has already lost its oxygen, guess where it's heading. It flies through the heart and right into the lungs, exactly. It gets though the heart no problem, since there's a lot of space, but there's a problem when it tries to squeeze into the more narrow space in the lung. When it's a tiny blob, you can experience some chest pain and you can feel like it's hard to breathe, especially when laying down. Because it can make your lung go offline. When it's a bigger blob? Well, you get the picture.

So keep moving your legs, people! And drink water!