If one day, by the greatest of luck, you meet someone who has green blood... don’t panic! This person is not necessarily an alien! Indeed, imagine that there is a very rare blood disease which transforms the red color of blood into… green. We tell you everything!
The sulfhemoglobinemia, that’s what this famous disease is called which turns your blood into something green worthy of science fiction movies! This is a very rare blood pathology: it is characterized by the presence in excess of ” SulfHb (A derivative of hemoglobin) in the blood.
Have you heard of “sulfhaemoglobinemia”?
This excess causes discoloration of the skin and mucous membranes (which then become bluish, even greenish). But what makes sulfhaemoglobinemia so special, it is above all its amazing effects on our vital fluid: the latter indeed becomes quite green! But really dark green, you see like the blood of aliens that we see in the movies …
Is it serious ?
Sulfhemoglobinemia is not serious per se. Yes your blood turns green, but you will not die of it. Generally speaking, this strange blood color does not last, it resolves on its own when red blood cells are renewed. Note, however, that extreme cases may require a blood transfusion, even if this has never happened before.
But what exactly causes sulfhaemoglobinemia? Well it turns out that the phenomenon occurs after taking too much (therefore overdose) of certain drugs: we can notably mention sumatriptan (prescribed for migraines), sulfasalazine (an anti-inflammatory), phenazopyridine2 (an analgesic), or sulfonamide antibiotics. In any case, the presence of too much of the compounds of these drugs in hemoglobin causes a chemical reaction that turns the blood into a green substance.
An astonishing case recorded in Vancouver
Sulfhemoglobinemia is a disease so rare that some doctors don’t even know it exists. So imagine the panic in 2005 in a Vancouver hospital, when a medical team came across this kind of case while undergoing surgery! In an article published in the journal The Lancet, doctors recounted how shocked it was when they saw dark green blood flow from their patient’s arteries.
They immediately sent a sample to the laboratory for analysis, and that’s when they discovered the presence of sulfur atoms in the hemoglobin protein… Yes, no copper like that of Mr Spock from the stroke !
Finally, be aware that some divers have also noticed that the blood could also take a greenish tint at a depth of a few meters … An optical phenomenon explained by the wavelengths of white light absorbed by the water … remains no less fascinating, don’t you think? If not, do you have “blood in gold”? The rarest blood group on the planet!
–
