Japanese Researchers Win Ig Nobel Prize for Intestinal Breathing

Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sept. 12 (Jiji Press)--A team of Japanese and U.S. researchers won this year's Ig Nobel Prize in Physiology on Thursday for their discovery that mammals can breathe using their intestines through the anus.

It is the 18th straight year that Japanese researchers have received an Ig Nobel Prize. The award ceremony was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a Boston suburb. The annual Ig Nobel Prize, a spoof of the Nobel Prize, was launched in 1991 to honor "achievements so surprising that they make people laugh, then think."

The team's research is expected to help alleviate the symptoms of patients suffering from respiratory failure due to diseases such as COVID-19.

Tokyo Medical and Dental University professor Takanori Takebe, 37, and other researchers who began their study on the lungs from the perspective of regenerative medicine, an area in which where they specialize, focused on how loaches breathe. Loaches breathe through gills normally and absorb oxygen through their intestines in a low-oxygen environment.

The team conducted experiments on mice and pigs, in light of the possibility of applying the intestinal breathing method to humans with deteriorating lung function. Liquid containing large amounts of oxygen or oxygen gas was injected into the animals through their anuses, resulting in an increase in blood oxygen and an improvement in survival rates.

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