Woman treated by doctors after her blood turned blue | Hacker News Reader

Woman treated by doctors after her blood turned blue

theguardian.com

56 pointsEndXA34 comments

I wonder what goes through the minds of the guardian's editors when they write titles like this. "Woman treated by doctors" isn't a story. One hopes that _everyone_ whose blood turns blue would be treated by doctors.

[A] Woman [having been] treated by doctors most certainly is the story here.

No it is not. A woman's blood turning blue is the story. Being treated by doctors when your blood turns blue is expected and normal. Blood turning blue is not expected or normal.

I think you're misinterpreting the very classic style in which headlines are written.

Subject, Action, important qualifiers.

"Woman's blood turns blue after benzocaine ingestion" is the story. Being treated by doctors is not.

Thanks for summarising, what a poor headline. It's like saying "Man Retrieved From Sea After Dying" [article: man was attacked by a shark].

But then I wouldn't need to read the article to answer the question that pops up into my head.

It's not about who gets to be treated, it's a reporting of an actual event, so it spells out who was treated ("a woman").

And if she was famous and her name to have any relevance to the readers, then instead of "a woman" it would be her name in the title ("X treated for ...", and ditto for a man).

The story is that her blood turned blue, not that she was treated by a doctor. _Of_course_ she was treated by a doctor! Her blood turned blue!

That's not how the world or journalism works. All of what the title says is the story, and there's no "of course" there.

She could have died before see could be seen by a doctor, for example ("Accident victim bleeds blue blood").

She could found out on her own and started a cult ("Woman starts a cult after her blood turned blue")

She could have hidden it, fearing some superstition ("Woman lived with blue-blood disease for decades")

And any other combination of events...

To me this was a story! It was an unusual reaction, caused by a drug that is available over the counter and we may have used, and can be treated with a simple antidote.

It had a beginning, a middle, and a happy ending. And it contained useful information about not using too much of this stuff, or use it for too long.

I'm getting tired of coming up with original responses, so I'm just going to link to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21049392 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21049422 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21049406

Alternatively...alien anthropologist/spy/fugitive/tourist/etc's disguise technology partly fails, revealing non-human blood. MiB neuralyzes witnesses and plants the methemoglobinemia story.

I'm a medical toxicologist, I'm surprised this tiny case report got picked up by The Guardian, and that it got on the hacker news front page, it's bread and butter stuff. Sulfhemoglobin is actually even less dangerous than methemoglobin, since it shifts the oxygen-hemoglobin dissociation curve right. We all have low levels of methemoglobin produced in our own bodies, but it can increase from certain exposures. Symptoms are usually very mild, but rarely it can become severe. It's typically treated with methylene blue, if treated at all. If anyone has questions for me, I'll check back later in the day.

I was surprised to hear that not only is there a known treatment ("methylene blue"[0]) for the condition , but that a smallish hospital like Miriam actually had some on hand.

The wiki page explains that "methylene blue" actually treats a variety of problems.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylene_blue

Medication for fungus in the aquarium / aquaculture industry, for instance. Useful when shipping fish and for good hatch rates.

If they didn't have it on hand they could go down to the local Walmart, I've used it many times to treat my fish with ich.

I'm assuming this is methemoglobinemia or something analogous to that. It's usually a congenital disease or one that develops because of medications. The two meds I can think of that would cause this are dapsone and benzocaine. It's an easily treatable disease where we have the patient take methylene blue, cool but not worrying with proper treatment.

Either you know what you are talking about or read the article, as that is spot on

It's probably the only thing that causes your blood to turn blue, usually from numbing medication haha. Skin looks blue too, but patients are generally totally fine.

Your tissues can turn blue from excess silver:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria

But that probably doesn't affect the blood.

I didn't know it's treated with methylene blue. Kind of amazing how blue blood is treated with blue dye. What a beautifully simple example of biochemistry being counterintuitive.

Homeopathy works!

> I'm assuming this is methemoglobinemia or something analogous to that

You don't have to assume. "Woman, 25, diagnosed with methemoglobinemia" is the first sentence after the title.

> The two meds I can think of that would cause this are dapsone and benzocaine.

"Doctors say numbing agent for toothache to blame" is the next sentence after that. "Warren said the condition had been triggered by a numbing agent containing benzocaine" is further down.

> It's an easily treatable disease where we have the patient take methylene blue

"The woman was treated with an antidote, methylene blue" is in there too.

The differential diagnoses for methemoglobinemia are more varied than your comment suggests. Here is a reasonable list: https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/204178-differential

Is it bad to have blue blood ? I think it could be kind of novel if it didn't have any nasty side effects.

Nobles have had a very bad few centuries. I'd be worried about persecution.

He article mentions that the hemoglobin variant which is blue doesn’t release oxygen well. This would be bad.

The substance benzocaine is in certain soar throat pills.

when a case is surprising enough to make it to the main news, isn't it by definition so rare and unlikely it's not really worth thinking about?

More importantly, is HN the right venue to share this?

I find it interesting, in fact blood can turn green as well, without being an alien:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfhemoglobinemia

> Sulfhemoglobinemia is a rare condition in which there is excess sulfhemoglobin (SulfHb) in the blood. The pigment is a greenish derivative of hemoglobin which cannot be converted back to normal, functional hemoglobin. It causes cyanosis even at low blood levels.

>It is a rare blood condition that occurs when a sulfur atom is incorporated into the hemoglobin molecule. When hydrogen sulfide (H2S) (or sulfide ions) and ferric ions combine in the blood, the blood is incapable of carrying oxygen.

Indeed, this is why hydrogen sulfide is toxic in smallish doses

Blood hacking

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